Point Reyes Reminds Me

In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that most of my travel expenses, including my flights and the camper van rental costs, were provided by JUCY, a camper van rental company. 

The woman in the Bodega Bay visitor’s center seemed downright annoyed by the lack of camping options. She blamed the sequester and a series of other government cuts. The best was back at Samuel P. Taylor, a redwood grove a few miles from the entrance to Point Reyes National Seashore. Or where we’d camped the night before at Doran Beach.

While I could relate to her frustration — we’d driven an extra hour or more up the coast to find a place to spend the night — I was having a hard time keeping up my outrage because it was uncharacteristically sunny. I was high from vitamin D. The weather was in the mid-80s; I was in shorts. In April! My friend Knox joined me on this three day camping junket. (Goal? Review a JUCY Champ camper van.) He was wearing a good deal of the previous day’s sunshine on his forehead and may or may not have also been high.

Much of the land is protected ranch-land. The region sits right on top of the San Andreas fault so the underlying geology acts like a warning to anyone getting big ideas about building here. Instead of the suburban sprawl you’d expect so close to San Francisco, there are twee little towns with bakeries and galleries and oyster bars. There are dairy barns — meaning a lot of good local cheese — and grazing lands. The waters of Tomales Bay are punctuated with little piers and moorings for oyster baskets. Spurs of road wind out to bluffs from which there are spectacular views of the Pacific.  On one, we stop the engine while a road crew trims the canopy of trees and the air is heavy with the scent of California eucalyptus.

On my last visit to Point Reyes, the landscape was invisible. The fog was a heavy gray blanket, the air was cold. I remember a short walk in a damp cloud to see the lighthouse, and then, giving up and heading inland to find warmth.

This time, the sky was wide open and so blue, the fields were deep purple wild iris and bright orange poppies and dozens of other wildflowers. The beaches were covered with sea lions, the breezes lifted the noise of their barking and their wet dog and fish gut smell. We saw pairs and trios of gray whales heading north and when they’d breach, we’d ooh and ah and feel lucky.

I am so much of Seattle now that I forget that I am a California girl by birth. I have none of the stereotype about me, but I am so drawn to the Pacific that it’s something I write about over and over and over again. And to be in California at its very best, the sand warm, the surf mellow, the sky the very deepest blue… I can watch the ocean hit the shore in a circular meditation, like a heartbeat.  I will stall on the very pedestrian things that call me until it’s dark or I really should get out of the sun, already. I will head to the car, but with great regret.

It would be mostly true to say that I miss California, but what I miss is the kind of experience I had on this recent trip to Point Reyes. Standing on the sand in those rocky coves with my feet in the Pacific, the sun reflecting all around me, the roar of the ocean cancelling out everything else.