Rolling south toward the ocean, over the old granites of the Gavilan Range north end, through avenues of Eucalyptus and tawn grass, the feeling came again, a shy yearning to seep from the hills’ contours, rising as fog off the tules lining the Pajaro River. It is a longing for the landscape that comes over me at times, but more than that. How can I long for the landscape, when I am part of it and in it?
I long to become the landscape conscious of itself, to inhabit these ranges as I inhabit my limbs, to feel the faults as ripples in my broad back. The grind of plate against plate a dull joyous ache inside me, the granites gliding into their current place over millions of years blood in my veins. Some years ago I stood in the Mojave’s west extremity, looked up at the low Neenach range of hills born with the Gavilan Range. I thought then of these San Benito rocks seen so often over the last quarter-century, imagined them born in the same great pulse of magma to be rent, rifted, drifted on facing sides of the San Andreas. Yesterday my mind flew south to the Mojave, to the Joshua trees on this rock’s other half.
Kat grew up here, where the Santa Lucias — the next range west — drop at last into the sea. Water grinds the rock away, the sand-fused cobbles of Cretaceous rivers slow-crumbling into the surf, to populate the floor of the offshore canyon. Sea lions, harbor seals draped themselves languorously on the rocks and so did we, the low fog overcast cooling us, buckwheat and Dudleya clinging to cliff faces, the poison oak turned red a season early. We walked the point of sea wolves, impossible turquoise in the sand-shallows, whale vertebrae two feet across piled carefully together. Nearby: a broad picket-fence of ribs, a self long eroded into its landscape surround.
I so love those final two sentences.
Know the longing well, to not only be part of, but be the land itself - can maybe even say, in moments here and there, that I know what it feels like to get there.
A beautiful essay - thank you, Chris.
That was just beautiful. Thanks for writing that one out.
Great imagery. A place I missed in my too-brief California sojourns. Sometime, somehow need to get there.
And in the “impressions of place” category, spyder, who seems to be running around keeping ‘60s rock alive in the Southwest this summer, has a post up entitled The Greater Sonoran Desert in which he gives a nod to your inspiration:
Ah…Pt. Lobos. Truly a special place.
Oh, goodness. I *knew* there was a reason to come back to the internet.
In the meantime, may I please meme you, my dear Chris Clarke?
As I read this I can picture that impossible turquoise so clearly… thanks for bringing my connection to that place back to consciousness.