| Adventure to Sea Ranch, Part Deux |
[Dec. 27th, 2009|11:54 pm] |
Kat and I went back to Sea Ranch today.
We got up early, leaving Berkeley by seven. We drove off through the rain and the mist, crossing over the Richmond Bridge, hanging suspended in the ghosty fog.
As we went up - through San Rafael, through Novato, through Petaluma - the landscape began to change. Off the 101, we drove through lush, green farmland, with rolling hills that reminded us of Ireland, occasionally punctuated with very un-Ireland-like palm trees. The light filtering into the car was soft and lovely. Wooden signs nailed to fenceposts implored landowners to fight against a local quarry.
"I hope this weather clears up soon," Kat said, as the tires slipped a little on a tight curve.
"Hopefully," I said.
Then, the sun found us.
We rolled the windows down and took a deep breath, the ocean air making me feel slightly giddy. "Can you smell that?" I asked her.
She nodded.
We turned a corner.
Storms from the night before had stirred up the sea, and she was like nothing I had ever seen. Massive white waves surged up from the depths and crashed back down into the blue, blasting against rocks and sending white foam fifty feet in the air.
As I picked up jaw up from my lap I cried "PULL THE CAR OVER PULL THE CAR OVER."
She did, and I was out the door with my camera, getting as close to the edge of the sheer cliff as I dared.
"Fuck," I breathed.
The air couldn't have been any clearer, and the ocean any more fiercer. I had never seen waves so large, tides so massive.
Further along, we discovered a tiny beach without a single footprint on it. We were the first people to walk there that morning, crunching through the pebbles, touching the brightly colored kelp and smooth shells and jagged rocks.
A sign warned us about "sleepers" - large waves that come up quickly and carry away unsuspecting beachgoers. We kept a safe distance, sitting on a rock and watching them crest and surge. They came down so quickly they left a misty trail in the air, refracting the sunlight into a soft rainbow that hovered over the blue.
We kept going.
The Sonoma coast is like something from another universe. We traveled for hours, hugging her shoreline. We went up dizzyingly high, red cliffs and found ourselves looking along a hundred miles of coastline, only to dip down into a dense, green forest that Kat dubbed "Ferngully." We saw the Russian River emptying into the sea. Then we were among trees that had been burnt in a forest fire, where tiny, pale shoots emerged from blackened bark. Then a small coastal town, then thick kelp beds, and then flat, tan fields of feathery grass where shaggy brown cows grazed, overlooking the immense ocean. I felt so staggeringly small, the hugeness of my emotions and problems and words and self swallowed up by this gorgeous place. We were nothing but ions, free radicals floating through space.
I cried.
And now, back in my apartment, in my PJs and my monkey slippers, with a great big dog snoring beside me and a big day tomorrow, I sleep.
Goodnight, California. |
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