Going to Church on 17-Mile Drive
Finding spirit between the ocean and the golf courses
Sunday morning, I awoke earlier than usual and grabbed a latte at The Cherry Bean before getting lost and driving through some of the miles of spinach and lettuce fields that dominate the Salinas Valley, known as “The Salad Bowl of the World”.
The Monterey Farm Bureau has these percentages of how many of our produce comes from the area: “61% of leaf lettuce, 57% of celery, 56% of head lettuce, 48% of broccoli, 38% of spinach, 30% of cauliflower, 28% of strawberries, and 3.6% of wine grapes”.
Once I found my way out of the city limits, I rolled down the windows and breathed air permeated with the scent of fertilized dirt and the verdant aroma of lush green. The two-lane road cut through mostly bare fields where workers prepped for planting as cruciferous plants went to seed. As I crossed over the mountain, fields were replaced with the salty air I was falling in love with.
I passed multiple churches with full parking lots on my way to 17-Mile Drive. Why? This is the Garden of Eden on one side, with the ocean’s tempestuous proof of the universal power roaring on the other. That would be enough to bolster my faith every single day if I lived there.
17-Mile Drive is a swath of toll road that cuts through tony Pebble Beach. Sporting types might know that name from the PGA golf course. The drive contains another spiritual dichotomy: my version of heaven and hell on each side of the road. While the beautiful ocean with its life-dictating tides rolls on one side, the other contains the most unnatural, manicured version of nature—golf courses and mansions.
Throughout the drive, I mostly ignored the civilization on the left side of the road. I know which side is for me. In some spots, crosswalks for golf carts cut to holes placed next to the ocean with turf replacing sand and rocks, making me inordinately angry.
Do we have to encroach on every single place of natural beauty? Really? When will we stop? When it’s all under artificial turf? God, I hope not.
While a large part of 17-Mile Drive cuts through residential areas, golf resorts, and their shops, much of it offers access to Monterey Bay, from the shoreline to towering views of the water below cliffs. There are four entrances, and the one in Pacific Grove gives the most ocean views almost as soon as you enter. I followed the road from PG to the gate that leads to Carmel By-the-Sea. That route, except for The Lodge at Pebble Beach at the end, is almost all coastline and cypress forests.
The second stop was my favorite: Restless Sea and Point Joe. No surprise, the bay is exceptionally turbulent in this spot, caused by waves coming from different directions and hitting the rocks above and below the water’s surface.
The water churns and explodes against the visible rocks, then trickles into waterfalls down their sides while flocks of pelicans fly over like it’s nothing. As I watched the waves, stirred by rocks and sailor bones, I found myself learning the sounds the ocean makes as it rolls in, before hitting the outcrops, allowing me to somewhat predict when they’d hit, creating their salty fireworks display. It’s such a satisfying thing, turning my senses to the build-up, anticipating the burst of the impact, exhaling my held breath as rock stopped water.
At a pull-off between China Rock and Bird Rock, I kept my distance even though my soul wanted my body to get closer and feel more than just the seaspray on my sunburning skin. Kids played on the rocks while parents watched, eagle-eyed towards the surf. Being solo and not knowing how much strength I had kept me back, but I was fine with sitting and being restored.
At Bird Rock, a hazy cloud of fog lit from within by bright sun moved over the cove, shifting the water’s color from the shade of green that gets called seafoam and sea glass to a deep blue. I’d steadily been driving up a cliff, not noticing that I was now above the coastline and able to see rocks jutting from the sea much further out, steering the water, making it converge in different spots when it hit land. With the splashes of salt water sprinkling my skin, I felt closer to mortality than just about any other time in my life. The bay gives a salty sample, but any more than that and I’d be gone.
Not that this prepared me for the Fanshell Beach Overlook. With a small cliff rising above the water-bound mountains and the wake, I was on the edge of everything I knew to be true in my world. Everything beyond that cliff was not of my world. I was a visitor, landlocked and gill-less, lucky enough to glimpse into another universe.
To my eye, when the waves crested, it turned the shade of the green insulator glass that used to dot Midwestern utility poles. On the beach below the cliff, people shrieked and ran from the surf, then tiptoed back to the shore to tempt it again.
Fog shadowed the sun as I drove away from the coastline and into the ancient forest of massive Monterey cypress trees in Crocker Grove, on my way to the Lone Cypress.
Estimated to be over 250 years old, this Monterey cypress likely grew from a sapling on this rocky outcrop not far from the forest.
In the waters below, bobbing creatures cracked the water’s surface. They reminded me of the surfers in Santa Cruz, but they definitely weren’t human. A couple stood near me, speculating on whether they were harbor seals, birds, or just kelp stirred up by the voracious wake. Since Fanshell Beach is one of the largest spots where harbor seals have their pups in the area, seals seemed likely. Mary and her crew later verified that they were almost certainly seals.
By now, I was getting tired, sunburned, and overwhelmed by how much I had seen and the way my brain was processing these scenes that had me feeling mortal and small in the enormity of the many parts of the world that are foreign to me. I left 17-Mile Drive as it moved inland, and drove through picturesque Carmel. Upscale and crowded with Sunday strollers and shoppers, I wasn’t interested in hanging around.
Back in Pacific Grove, I stopped by a chowder house for some local fish before returning to the house where we were celebrating the 77th birthday of Mary’s sister, Andrea. Chuck made enchiladas rojas from scratch, along with Texas sheet cake. Gathered around the dining room table with a full plate and a glass of wine that never went empty for long, watching their family dynamics play out, conversing about the day, brought me back to the world I know after feeling like I spent the day getting familiar with a whole other universe.
You can buy me a coffee for church, and I’ll pray for you and the seals.
This is some of your most evocative writing ever. Your photos and videos are gorgeous and I could almost smell the salt spray!