Above the Clouds, Below the Sun
Not the day I wanted, but the day I needed.
I love to drive. Truly, it’s been a lifelong thing, from begging my dad to let me get behind the wheel on country roads when I was barely 14, to planning trips around great drives now.
17-Mile Drive was just a warm-up for the big drive of my trip: Monterey to Santa Barbara (or maybe San Luis Obispo) through Big Sur on the Pacific Coast Highway, a road I have dreamed of driving since I first heard of it long, long ago.
Once again, I started Monday early, ready to get on the road once I unraveled myself from Salinas. I passed a horde of parked vehicles at Point Lobos State Marine Preserve south of Carmel and kept going. While I was excited for more churning ocean, towering views, and the magic of Big Sur that I’d only read about, I wasn’t in the mood to fight crowds on a Monday. Instead, I made my first stop a bit north of Garrapata State Beach.
This was a different atmosphere than what I had the day before. While the sun shone on the highway, looking over the cliffs brought dense fog that dissipated when it collided with the land below. The road felt like the dividing line between heavens below and blue sky above. Disconcerting and eerie. The waves ripped, seemingly with more power than I’d seen the day before, which I didn’t think was possible.
The further I drove, the thicker and darker the fog grew. At every pull-off, all I could see were clouds below my feet. At the time, I didn’t consider that this was a wholly unique and incredible experience of its own. I was just annoyed that I wasn’t getting the Big Sur experience I’d dreamed of, full of sparkling blue water, thrilling bridges, and expansive cliff views of never-ending blue sky and ocean.
But the fog just got thicker, staying low enough to repeatedly fool me into trying each pull-off, hoping to see coastline, and only seeing white.
Even crossing the Bixby Bridge was a let-down. Instead of being exhilarated and terrified of the height and view, it felt like all the other bridges I crossed—concrete sitting on a layer of white.
The more I drove, the more annoyed I got, and the thicker the fog grew. While on my level, I needed sunglasses to shade against the brilliant sun in the mountains.
I rationalized with myself: there’s no controlling weather conditions, especially in a volatile yet delicate environment like the Central Coast. This didn’t happen because I screwed up. It’s just one of those things that happens.
But then I learned that Highway 1 was closed about ten miles south of Big Sur, with no detours, and that’s when I really got pissed off. As if I were going to prove CalTrans wrong, I drove all the way to the “Road Closed” sign before I turned around and started back, my own cloud—this one very gray—forming in my car.
Mary, along with just about everyone I know who’s familiar with Big Sur, had recommended a stop at Nepenthe, a restaurant that has towered 800 feet over the Big Sur coast for over 75 years. Knowing that at least a little bit of my foul frame of mine was from low blood sugar, I pulled into the tiny parking lot and set out to climb the endless stairs into the trees, wondering if I was just doing something that would hurt my back and irritate me even more.
When I arrived at the top, the brilliant blue of the sky spread out before me as the clouds of fluffy fog nudged up to the cliffside. Under vibrant orange and blue umbrellas shading them from the sun, a nearly full deck of diners, their lilting voices carried on the breeze, indulged in a late lunch and mid-day wine break.
At my table, I ordered their famous Ambrosiaburger, a side salad loaded with blue cheese, and a glass of California Grenache.
I lingered over lunch, taking my time since I no longer had any particular place to be. The Henry Miller Memorial Library down the road looked to be in my wheelhouse, and I considered going, but decided not to take any chances since I was finally happy where I was.
Once I finished lunch and got my fill of sitting still, I wandered to the edge of the deck to make one more attempt to see the coast.
From this perspective, it hit me—I’d just eaten lunch in heaven. There was little sign of earth or ocean beyond a bit of sloped ground at the edge of the deck, housing a forest of cypress trees before descending into nothingness that met the sky on the horizon.
When does this ever happen? It’s not something that can be planned; these whims of nature can either ruin a day or turn it into an experience unlike any other.
For half of the day, I’d chosen to let the fog ruin my day. I needed to stop, breathe, and really see what was happening.
I was as close to floating above the earth as I will ever be. Just by dumb luck, the happenstance of deciding I was going to be on that highway, on that day, at that time.
Goddamn.
I took my time returning to my car. Enjoying the view and the piney air, along with the mountain vistas. When I returned to my car, I turned on one of my favorite albums—"Horses” by Patti Smith, which had been released 50 years ago that day. No longer preoccupied with checking the turn-offs for views, I zipped down the highway, thrilling in every sharp curve and turn, singing along at the top of my lungs with the windows down, inviting the fog to join me.
On Friday, two days after I returned home, Mary texted me. “Terrible fucking day on the coast.”
She attached a statement from the Monterey County sheriff with a story of a family that visited Garrapata State Beach earlier that day. Around 1 p.m., the waves swept away their seven-year-old daughter. Her father tried to save her, but didn’t survive. Her mother had also been swept away, but made it back to shore and their 2-year-old.
The little girl’s body washed ashore on Sunday.
I’m glad Garrapata was socked in with fog last Monday, and I didn’t see anything. For selfish reasons—I didn’t want to have an image of this unfathomable tragedy in a place that was familiar.
I have watched the video in this post, shot just a bit north of where this happened, over and over. The part of me that thinks we have more control over the world than we do gets angry. Who would let their child get close enough to that violent ocean to get snatched by it? So many people. I saw them. I photographed them. This doesn’t happen often, but once is too many times.
But it does absolutely no good to blame parents, one who’s gone and one who’s experiencing unimaginable grief. We all fuck up.
Today, a week after my drive above the clouds, I drove from my home near St. Louis to Chicago to see Patti Smith and her band perform “Horses” in its entirety. I thought of that family.
“Redondo Beach,” the story of an argument that ends with the narrator looking for the girl who is “gone gone,” not knowing that she has thrown herself to her death in the Pacific Ocean, washing up on the Los Angeles-area beach. In “Kimberly,” Smith sings sweetly of cradling and protecting her infant sister during a tornado. “Elegie” is just that, written in memory of Jimi Hendrix.
During “Land,” one of my all-time favorite songs, Patti built on the original lyrics to illustrate that there is horrible shit in the world, but there are also incredible things—there is love and beauty and connection.
And I cried, sobless but with tears dripping down my face, once again accepting what we all have to accept just about every hour of every day of our lives: it’s awful, but it’s wonderful.
Sometimes the awful turns into floating above the clouds. Those are the moments we require to function through the rest.