After work we drive up Highway 1, racing the waning sun. The hills are brown and the pumpkins ripe and the ocean a rich blue glass. Wind blows offshore and the crisp air hints at winter marching from the north. Leaves hang yellow and orange on the trees and swirl in vortices on the ground.
We arrive at the beach. The waves are good. Nobody out. We slide into wetsuits that are too tattered for the coming winter, but we’re cheap and broke and want to squeeze another year from the neoprene. We enter the ocean and feel the looming solstice in the cold dense water.
The sun sets as we reach the lineup. Hungry for waves before darkness, we scramble for whatever shoals on the sandbar. We’re not picky and we’re rewarded with a steady stream of peaks.
As we wait between sets we admire the sky. But we eye the seal rookery on the distant point and think of white sharks. We know little of their biology or habits but we know attacks often occur in the fall. Or maybe we just think that or heard it on some documentary or bar hearsay or perhaps we’re channeling the paranoid ramblings of our stoner buddy, Mick.
We surf without adverse incident until twilight rims the horizon. We catch waves to shore. As we loiter on the sand we see splashing near the lineup: seal or sea lion or sea otter or pelican or cormorant, or a white shark devouring one of the above, we don’t know. This place is alive.
Pure.
The season turns perfect and relentless and ephemeral. Numb and calm and stoked we watch the last sliver of twilight melt from the sky and we absorb a moment unbound, infinite.
Just a moment then it’s gone.
by Tom Mahony
Doesn’t sound like the California I normally read about. this sounds great. I am keen to roll along highway one in fall now. Please recommend a vehicle Tom. do you have a story about one?
California is best in fall, IMHO. The farther north you go, the better it gets.