Highway 1, California

When Paul woke - or rather, when I woke him, bounding eagerly onto his bed - we marched downstairs to a gigantic breakfast in the cafeteria. We ate cereal and yoghurt and prunes and hashbrowns and pancakes, and rice and beans and salad, which I, hungry from jetlag, tacked on to the end of my breakfast. Then we walked downtown to rent a car, and set off north along the California coast.

Highway 1 winds narrowly and sinuously along the coastal hills, whose cliffs and precipitous slopes drop hundreds of feet to the sea. Great rocks, pounded by millenia of waves from the open Pacific, jut from the water in spires and jagged lumps. Beyond lies the imposing ocean, far vaster than the north-east's Atlantic, which encounters the shore in the quiet coves, bays and barrier island systems of New England. No gentle shaping protects the coast of California from the huge expanse of the open sea. The sea wind drives endlessly inland, like a perpetual message of strength and desolation.

I felt that desolation most keenly when Paul and I stood at the lighthouse on the tip of Point Reyes. Only a metal railing separated us from the sea. Behind us, the rocky headland hulked, battered by ocean wind. We'd arrived at dusk, and in the failing light I sensed a great, pitiless solitude - and felt my own insignificance, as though the ocean could simply have reached up a thumb and rubbed me out, snuffed me casually from the earth. What a terrible loneliness! The other visitors had gone inside the lighthouse for a tour, leaving us utterly alone. What in broad daylight might have seemed only an ordinary vista of ocean became, to me, the emptiness that sailors centuries ago must have known in the face of the great and indifferent sea.

On the walk back to our car, we looked down the cliffs to a winding beach at the base of the hills. The shapes of seagulls and pelicans passed far below, like nomads. I felt alone and awed, gazing out over the slowly dimming surf, and passing beneath an avenue of gnarled pine trees that were flung away from the sea in leaning pose, shaped by wind. I clung to Paul and prattled nervously, watching the wind sweep over the wide, silent hills.

Driving to our campsite through the ugly and broken cow country, we saw deer - does and antlered bucks - two barn owls, and a rabbit. One owl paused on a fence post, and suffered us to gaze at him for a moment in our headlights before he swept silently on again. Earlier, we'd seen harriers flitting over the brush; the next day we spotted a coyote among the cows. Throughout our trip, I felt astonished at how rich in wildlife such empty country could be.

~

Paul and I woke to rain. We'd heard it in the night, in steady thick drops on our tent roof. I'd cuddled close to him and fallen asleep again with a great sense of safety, warmth and well-being in our little tented sphere. We emerged in the morning to an absolute downpour, which drenched Paul even in his short trips between our tent and the car ten feet away.

Worrying about the fate of our day, we left our tent and drove from Olema to Point Reyes Station for a breakfast of eggs, bacon and hashbrowns in a friendly little diner. The interior, warm and flowery, sported the Hispanic touches both in decorations and menu that characterize the San Francisco area. While we ate, the clouds slipped away and left shining sunlight, so abruptly that I squeaked, "Oh look! Sunlight!" in the middle of the restaurant. People at the tables nearest us turned their heads and stared at me. I must have sounded as though I hadn't seen the sun in years.

We came back to our tent among the other tents encircling the small field (hardly a field - more a muddy lawn) where we'd camped. In the glisten of sunlight, we threw a frisbee back and forth over the badminton net, while the other campers goggled politely at the distance of our throws. Then we drew together again, admired our mud-encrusted toes and hands, hugged each other, and packed up our tent.

Back through the cow country. The cattle ranches, considered "historical," have existed since the 1850's, and great swaths of Point Reyes National Park have been devastated by their lowing herds. Although the federal government has purchased the land, the ranchers are allowed stay for as long as their farms remain within the family.

At last, though, we arrived at Tomales Reserve and McClure's beach at the northern tip of the park. We walked down a long path between hill slopes covered in tangled bushes and dry-weather plants. No trees dot the landscape that juts out into the sea. Only dry, brown coastal scrub, specked with the occasional stiff green of coyote bushes, covers the long ridge and the sloping hills. Point Reyes is very dry, an arid environment where it rains only in winter. The downpour we'd received that morning, a park ranger told us, had been the first rain in four or five months.

"That brings home how unlucky we'd have been if it had rained all day," said Paul. No wonder the folks at the restaurant had looked at me so oddly.

The rangers showed us elk herds through spotting scopes, where the animals lounged among the scrub, chewing their cud, their 40-pound antlers majestic atop their heads. Ordinarily, in fall, each male accompanies a herd of 20 or so cows. The most readily visible group, though, was a "bachelor pad," in the ranger's words, of unsuccessful bucks. They lounged disconsolately together, while further off, a small herd of cows could be seen on a ridge alongside their buck. His head, covered in the thick ruff of fur that mantles male elks' heads and necks, rose proudly from the brush beside them.

The simplest things bring such great pleasure. After leaving the rangers and walking up the road to our car, we sat with the doors wide open and our feet out, passing a floury hard salami, a wedge of brie, two tomatoes and slices of wheat bread between us. We watched the sparrows flitting among the scrub and the elk as they rose to graze and then sank heavily down again to rest some more. The hot day spread all around us. In complete ease, we chatted contentedly, and planned our upcoming itinerary as well as dreamed about future forays.

Close in our memories lay the image of McClure's beach under the cliffs, our scramble up the rocks, the foamy wash of waves around our feet. I've held off writing about it, since the deep, glittering blue of the ocean, the red cliffs carved by wind, and the stained black quartzite rocks, jutting from the water and pounded by white surf, defy description. We played for hours on the sand; I sketched the birds, Paul waded in the surf, and we swung 15-foot seaweed whips we found on the beach, that lay there as though Poseidon had discarded his chariot-whip.

All while we walked, fragments of Plath's poem, "Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea," kept returning to my mind:

We are not what we might be; what we are
Outlaws all extrapolation
Beyond the interval of now and here:
White whales are gone with the white ocean.

No sea-change decks the sunken shank of bone
That chucks in backtrack of the wave;
Though the mind like an oyster labors on and on,
A grain of sand is all we have.

...Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation
Dwindles in the hour-glass.

And, by the time we'd eaten our salami and cheese and bread, we only had a little time for our return journey. We managed to stop at Muir Woods on the way home to see the towering redwoods in the dusk, and also stopped to take a few photos of the cliffs by the sea with our bright orange disposable camera. But how soon, it seemed, we were back at IHouse, fatigued and hungry, with only the energy to gulp down dinner at a bright, loud, warehouse-like Indian restaurant, then to struggle home to Paul's room and sleep.

Now, as though it was all a dream - or perhaps but a moment's wakefulness - I'm in Ann Arbor again, and the week has rushed by with the force of a train. Last night, in a moment of quiet, I stood with my kitten in my bedroom when I got home, late at night. I told him that if he purred any louder, he'd vibrate himself to bits in my arms.

There are compensations to returning.