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| Cold Near Cambria, April 11, 2022, Steve Brown |
April 12, 2022
1.
Outside the tent, the world is cold and damp and the sky to the east is a light lemon blue. To the south are some big, tall very leafy trees. They are species common to California, one that I, being from the Intermountain West, do not know. I know the Great Basin so well it almost is me, and I it. Utah juniper, pinion, gamble oak, aspen, blue spruce. Home is a place I can define well with words. Here is not home, and yet it feels so oddly familiar, like I belong here perhaps even more than home. The air is cold, but moist and sweet, and for once I can breathe because my sinuses aren't dried and caked with thin snot layered up thick like layers of old paint. It feels good to take in air so freely.
Yet, it is cold, and very damp; the grasses below my feet are bent over with dew. I decide to walk west, towards the sound of the sea. That too sounds like home, the constant pounding of the waves. It is the most beautiful sound in all the world, even from a distance, and it sounds much different here on the West Coast than along the Gulf Coast. In California waves thunder. In Texas they pshhh, or something like that. Even in a storm, waves in Texas are softer, more drawn out. In California, they thunder almost always, one after another. And to hear them and feel that air always seeking to congeal into deep fog is for me to feel at home like nowhere else even if I don't have the name for those incredibly tall, leafy trees south of me, now glazed with the first rays of light.
I walk towards a rail fence where the end of the continent meets the sky, hoping for a glimpse of those glorious waves crashing below. I am cold, but I don't mind. I know it's not true, but in the moment, I feel like I'd be happy to shiver deeply here forever just to hear that sound and breath this air. To breath and to be. That is the California coast to me.
Behind the rail fence there are scruffs of wet, ochre grasses, berry bushes, and then a drop down to the sea. Here, the trail turns right and follows the fence-line up a steep hill. I follow it, hoping for a better view--and direct sunlight.
That line of golden warmth has moved lower downslope somewhat, and I am able to rise up out of the shadow quickly. The only issue is that with the increased elevation comes also the increased wind. I immediately seek shelter in some windswept evergreens. The only problem is that brings the shade again--but it is definitely warmer than that wind. Hugging a tree, I glimpse west to sunlit whitecaps rolling in. This is it. When I just see and be, I am free. I've always known that. And yet, I let my days fill up with everything but that.
2.
I follow the path back down again, away from the windswept slope. The sun now blankets the wet, grassy expanse in gold, and away from the wind, I can feel the warmth of the sun through my coat. The path curves inland away from the wooden fence and towards those big, tall leafy trees. They are golden and glorious. The bugs and butterflies are out. And the birds, that have been up the entire time, have increased their chatter and activity. In a way, each day has a spring, and a summer, and a fall, and a winter. Four seasons in one day is actually the norm--we are just not in-tune enough to notice it and make the connection with that annual day we break into seasons.
I follow the path around almost to the parking lot where we unloaded our car for camp and find a trail to the sea. It is actually a small road that cuts down through the hillside. The banks are steep and covered with grasses and bushes and trees, and all at once I am again in damp shadow looking up at a glowing world of warmth just out of reach. That constant folding roar increases as I get my first glimpse of the ocean again--this time nearly at eyelevel. I pick up my pace.
And then the world opens up to the sand and the sea. There is not another person here, and it feels primal, original. I stand steady and amazed as again that wind hits me with a smell and force of life not to be taken lightly.
Faced with the unknowns of my kidney disease, I wonder if this will be the last time I will ever see this view.
It is a quiet wonder, but a deep one. Life has taken on a depth it never had before. Each experience seems sacred as it might not have a repeat.
Ironically, facing what could be turn out to be a terminal illness, makes me feel alive at a level I've never felt before. Fear is definitely there. But that voice cannot even begin to compete with the quiet, thundering awareness that life is just so damn beautiful.
3.
We have found a picnic area on a low bluff above a beach by the sea, and we have stopped to have breakfast. The wind is cold and horrendously harsh, and we have pulled out the bare minimum of what we need to get some hot oatmeal and hot chocolate into us. The one-burner propane stove is hissing its blue flames, the sound going in waves, as the wind does its best to wipe that fire out. I stand to the side and look out past the metal-pipe railing, down to the beach below and the onslaught of waves, which in this wind, break into fans of fine water-droplets, almost mist, catching the mid-morning sun.
As cold as it is--and it is oh so cold--there are a few scattered groups of people walking along the beach. A family of three--way out there to the south--is unsuccessfully trying to get a red, orange and yellow kite up. It swirls and crashes again and again. Too much wind, which I'm sure they know, of course. It would be impossible not to. I wonder what drives them. Fun? Or just stupid inflexible determination? I'm positive that if they succeed, they will lose that kite altogether.
My reflection doesn't last long. It is cold, oh so cold. The water has finally boiled, and we begin our own war with the wind, trying to get the oatmeal out of the paper packet into the bowl and keep as many of the flakes in there as possible before quickly grabbing and pouring in the hot water to hold everything down in a thick glue. And then it's the same process with the hot chocolate, a thin dust of dark powder carried off in the wind.
I eat the quickly-cooling paste and drink the hot beverage thinking "This is the coldest I've ever been." The view is absolutely stunning but not glorious enough to keep us here. We eat at a pace we've never eaten before, pack up any old way, and sigh with relief to be back in that car.
Yet, strangely, we are oh so alive.
That is what it is to experience that California coastal cold that I love so very much. I'd gladly do it again and again. I'm not so much different than that crazy family trying to fly a kite in cold hurricane-force winds. Some rituals are just more meaningful if they involve some brutal futility. There is some part of us that feels alive fighting against all odds to accomplish something--even if that something is just getting oatmeal to stay in the bowl long enough for water to weigh it down or getting a kite up long enough for one to count to thirty before it crashes to pieces.
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