We slept most of the way to the coast, taking turns at the wheel to follow sleepy truck drivers and their soft taillights glowing. I woke in the pre-dawn haze to see the firelights of San Bernardino dancing on the horizon, in the pale, grey light of the early morning the road was infinitely sadder and more refined and that’s how we knew we were, at last, on the road to Los Angeles. The ghost light made everything appear sharper and somewhat less beautiful. As we rolled down from the valley into L.A. the sun made the town more real and we caught our first glimpse of the city by the sea, where all good dreams go to die.
We turned off the 101 at San Luis Obispo and left Los Angeles behind. It was important to be on the move and to keep on going and, as the sky grew darker, we began to feel normal once again. After the turn-off the road curved down and away from the town in a long, graceful sweep that was neither beautiful nor strategic. The land on either side was mainly agricultural but sometimes vineyards were raised and brown-skinned Mexicans were working under large straw hats to protect themselves in the afternoon sun. There was no joy nor camaraderie amongst the workers in the field and although a few of the older labourers passed around a bottle of wine they just seemed numb, not that many were drinking.
We took the road that continued along the plateau for a while and then started to climb upwards, towards the hills that marked the beginning of the coast. From here you couldn’t yet see the sea but every so often the breeze came through the sun-roof and it was salty, Bill smiled and said “we’re going home,” and then the Pacific Ocean lay before us as we crested the rise and it really did feel like home.
The ocean laid before us, jeweled with white crests as far as the eye could see, and where the sky formed the horizon you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Below us the road dipped sharply towards the coast and then hugged the cliff-sides until, a way off, you could see where it turned round the headland and then you couldn’t see where it carried on anymore.
We drove for a while with the waves crashing against the sea wall, whilst on the other side old beach houses sat empty for the winter season against the sad backdrop of the sandy scrubland.
“I know what I’m talking about,” Bill was saying “I was quite well known at College.”
“I’m not going to tell you who she was.”
“Go on.”
“Probably not.”
“I know her?”
“Indirectly.”
“Fascinating.”
At Morro Bay we stopped the car to take photographs on a verge overlooking the beach. It felt good to have the sand under our feet again after so much concrete and hard dirt.
There were fishermen doing some serious fishing on the shoreline and they didn’t look to kindly on our loud voices by the sea.
“One thing i can’t seem to find is a good beach and a girl that’s always smiling.”
I nodded in agreement but really i was just glad to get out of the car.
The road continued on for another one hundred and fifty miles and it really was the most amazing drive. Sometimes we would be a hundred feet above the sea and other times we would descend, quite rapidly, to the shoreline and there were sea lions basking in the sun on the flat, grey rocks that ran alongside the verge.
We would stop the car on the sand by the side when there was no-one around, just to take pictures of nothing but the road disappearing into the distance. Once, there were two photographers on the other side setting up their tripods to take staid portraits of the bluff of the cliff, or the sun, or some other repetitive detail and they looked on, fascinated, as we photographed the straight road ahead.
Often, there’d be signs warning you of an impending rock-fall and you could see how it could become quite impassable at certain points of the year. But no rocks fell on our roof and we made it to Monetery that evening in one piece.
by Gordon Macrae.
