Flying over the Great Basin. It is the first time I have ever taken a plane west of Wyoming, across these giant arid spaces that bunch up and drop into the ocean.
The first time I came to the coast I was alone, packed into my old silver Honda and not sure what I was doing. I stopped to sleep in the dust in the middle of Utah, drank middle-of-nowhere coffee out of styrofoam, pissed on the side of the road in Nevada. I came down the Sierras in late afternoon, tasting the air thicken until, at a park outside Sacramento, I could swear I was in the cricket-humming Midwest of my childhood. Then I bought fruit from a stand in the hills and spent the night just short of the ocean, parked against a neighborhood curb.
When I woke, the dawn was pale. Roosters roamed the streets and a burro wandered the old Spanish plaza. San Juan Bautista. The only person awake was a baker girl, who sang loudly in her shop with the door open. I walked circles on the asphalt, watching the light rise.
It was raining as I got back into the car. I turned up the music and went to the ocean. For the first time, the Pacific stretched before me. I was nineteen years old, wearing ripped jeans, with long hair that curled at the ends.
I ran toward the break. It surged toward me. Suddenly soaked to the knee, laughing, sand whipping in the wind. Fifteen hundred miles from my tiny dorm room, the ocean had taken care of the last three feet.
Grey surf. That whole trip it rained. I met Makendra at a horse farm outside Monterey and she pitched hay, patted mares. There was the smell of horse poop, rich and fresh. We slept on the floor of the house. Then we packed bags and went into Big Sur, down the jagged coast, where the rivers rose so high and brown that in the end we simply walked down the middle of them. We ate thai food in the dripping forest and read aloud to each other.
Flying over the Basin now, I can’t help but recall Ed Abbey’s journey to Australia. “Next time I’ll do it right,” he said: a drive to the coast, a boat to the next continent. He hated the disorientation of stepping on a plane and somehow arriving, mere hours later, on a different part of the planet. The transition mattered. I find myself aching the same way—for the elongated journey, where the air gets hot and sweet, or slowly fresh and cold; where the ground slowly gathers up into foothills, then peaks. Where you stumble into a Reno cafe to pee and discover belly-dancing night. Where the mind comes to take the same shape as the rutted-up land around it.
We fly over the Sierras now, tops thick with cream, the valleys sharp and glacial. In less than an hour we’ll hit the coast. Suddenly, California. And for an instant, I’ll taste a sharp longing for my old life: where a trip was a journey. Where the continent unfolded slowly, pulling me into it. Where it hardly mattered where I ended up at all.
The first time I came to the coast I was alone, packed into my old silver Honda and not sure what I was doing. I stopped to sleep in the dust in the middle of Utah, drank middle-of-nowhere coffee out of styrofoam, pissed on the side of the road in Nevada. I came down the Sierras in late afternoon, tasting the air thicken until, at a park outside Sacramento, I could swear I was in the cricket-humming Midwest of my childhood. Then I bought fruit from a stand in the hills and spent the night just short of the ocean, parked against a neighborhood curb.
When I woke, the dawn was pale. Roosters roamed the streets and a burro wandered the old Spanish plaza. San Juan Bautista. The only person awake was a baker girl, who sang loudly in her shop with the door open. I walked circles on the asphalt, watching the light rise.
It was raining as I got back into the car. I turned up the music and went to the ocean. For the first time, the Pacific stretched before me. I was nineteen years old, wearing ripped jeans, with long hair that curled at the ends.
I ran toward the break. It surged toward me. Suddenly soaked to the knee, laughing, sand whipping in the wind. Fifteen hundred miles from my tiny dorm room, the ocean had taken care of the last three feet.
Grey surf. That whole trip it rained. I met Makendra at a horse farm outside Monterey and she pitched hay, patted mares. There was the smell of horse poop, rich and fresh. We slept on the floor of the house. Then we packed bags and went into Big Sur, down the jagged coast, where the rivers rose so high and brown that in the end we simply walked down the middle of them. We ate thai food in the dripping forest and read aloud to each other.
Flying over the Basin now, I can’t help but recall Ed Abbey’s journey to Australia. “Next time I’ll do it right,” he said: a drive to the coast, a boat to the next continent. He hated the disorientation of stepping on a plane and somehow arriving, mere hours later, on a different part of the planet. The transition mattered. I find myself aching the same way—for the elongated journey, where the air gets hot and sweet, or slowly fresh and cold; where the ground slowly gathers up into foothills, then peaks. Where you stumble into a Reno cafe to pee and discover belly-dancing night. Where the mind comes to take the same shape as the rutted-up land around it.
We fly over the Sierras now, tops thick with cream, the valleys sharp and glacial. In less than an hour we’ll hit the coast. Suddenly, California. And for an instant, I’ll taste a sharp longing for my old life: where a trip was a journey. Where the continent unfolded slowly, pulling me into it. Where it hardly mattered where I ended up at all.
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