Two years ago I woke up in my car along the Big Sur river. I was tired and cold and smelled like a campfire and I had half a tick in my neck. I was on the road by 5am and since Hwy 1 was closed from Gorda to Cambria I had to backtrack north before continuing south. I felt like I was missing an integral part of the Pacific Coast Highway experience and probably out of spite I turned off this random shitty road I probably had no business being on that took me past a horse pasture and eventually to the beach. I drank my cold coffee that had gone luke warm in my iceless ice-chest and hit the weed a couple times before packing in and got back on the road. Back north. Back across Bixby Canyon. Back up to Monterey. Over to the Salinas to turn back south down the valley. The expansive quiet farmlands calmed me to the point of forgetting I was missing arguably the best part of Hwy 1 and that I had a parasitic bug lodged in my neck. The weed probably helped with that too. I made it to Morro Bay by 10am where a hot urgent care doctor pulled the rest of the tick out of my neck and assured me I was going to be fine. It was a Tuesday so the small coastal town was mostly closed but everything seemed to be bathed in dreamy pink. I got tacos at a place on the water and rum for really cheap at the market next door then went back to my room and watched basketball and fell asleep. I woke up the next morning and eventually continued on to Joshua Tree after getting a sandwich in Los Angeles.
I finally got to drive that missing stretch of Hwy 1 in January with Rachael and it was just as beautiful as I had worried it would be.
I miss the road and being able to wonder about freely but I understand why we shouldn’t right now. Instead I will just remember the roads I’ve been on and plan for the next one. Trail of the Ancients? Going-to-the-Sun Road? Banff-Windermere Hwy?
And I’ll always think about those Big Sur horses.
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