Return to Monterey Bay
It had been nearly two years since I left the Monterey coast, and in that time I had not been back. Leaving the bay at the start of the COVID pandemic made that complicated, and the possibility of a visit was not made easier by the nearly seven hundred miles of newfound separation. Sure, I made the winding journey to Santa Cruz last year while visiting family in the Bay Area, but that was hardly the same. The Monterey coast I knew began south of Castroville and ran through Carmel to the furthest reaches of Big Sur. This was the environment in which I’d dedicated five years of my life, and the environment I’d dreamed of every day that I’ve been gone.
My new home in Oregon was not without its charm. Pine forests lined the sharp mountain peaks in every direction through miles of desolate wilderness. To the west, the river-carved valleys gave way to sandy beaches among rocky cliffs, set deep with long bays and prominent peninsulas. East, over the mountains, gave way to arid shrubland opening into the deserts that dominate the far reaches of this state. Despite this, my wandering mind was still enveloped by those misty visions of harsh stone pillars along a stretch of ocean I used to call home.
Photograph from Marina Dunes in early 2020 during my last months in California
My chance to return came in the form of a text from my oldest college friend: “Hey dude, check your email.” A graduation ceremony was going to be held for us, long after I and others in my class had lost hope that a ceremony would take place. Things had changed in the time that had past, ‘I was over it,’ I thought. Still, the idea of returning was something I longed for. With short notice I took a day off work. I packed some film, a couple cameras, and a few days of clothes. My car had been giving my trouble recently and I prayed it would survive the drive; at least that it would not break down until after I’d passed through the remote and snow covered mountains that divided Northern Oregon from Central California.
The day arrived in the typical fashion, rising hours before the sun for an early start on I5 South. The winter weather I was worried about ended up being nonexistent; There wasn’t a hint of ice even at the heights of the Sukiyaki Pass at the state’s southern border. Once in California things seemed to move quickly. One moment, Mt. Shasta watched over the landscape and before I knew it I was passing though orchards on my way to Vacaville. I arrived early for dinner with my family in San Jose before resuming my journey on 17 towards Santa Cruz. I had been on the road for about ten hours before beginning this final stretch and was anxious to finally reach my destination, a house rented for the weekend in the neighborhoods of southern Seaside. Arrival came with hellos, hugs, and collapse into the nearest couch for only a moment. It was getting late but we decided to head out to Monterey to catch up after so long apart.
Big Sur coastline from 2019 during my last semester.
The next morning began early with an espresso from a hidden cafe in industrial Seaside. The coffee was bright and strong, pulled from a manual lever machine; For five years I had lived fifteen minutes away and I was disappointed I’d never tried this before. While my friends were worrying about picking up their caps and gowns I knew I needed to be on the road again. I had previously loaded my camera with color Fuji C200, which wasn’t ideal considering the heavy fog and rainy weather. Despite that setback, I knew I needed to go. South on 1 through eastern Monterey the on past Carmel, this was a drive I was intimately familiar with. While my friends had come for the graduation, my closure was along the coast. Nearing Big Sur I pulled off at Garapata Park, a rocky stretch of cypress lined cliffs that had occupied more of my time than class ever had. While the park extended far inland, I stayed along the ocean and wandered the winding series of trails that drew perilously close to the steep drops.
The scenery was surreal, complex, and challenged my construct of time. Conflicting ideas jumped through my mind: I knew I was in a familiar place and I knew I was impossibly separated from it. My boots filled the same footprints I had left a thousand times before, but this time I wouldn’t be getting into my old Cherokee with the broken radio, speeding back to Marina. I’d leave for home seven hundred miles away, not knowing when or even if I would ever return. These realities coexisted but were as distinctly separated as the sharp canyon walls I perched over, funneling the Pacific mist over the landscape I’d soon be removed from.
As I continued further south I discovered a forking path that I didn’t recognize. It seemed unbelievable to me that a place like this could still hold undiscovered secrets, and after taking this path for a little while I met a view I had never seen before. After looping around a large, conical hill I was left facing a vast bay lined with caves at the waterline, embedded with a sandy, inaccessible beach far below. Even a place like this could offer a parting surprise.
I left and headed north, getting lunch at an old favorite spot which I ate overlooking the ocean at a bench half submerged into the sand. While nice, this was not the spot of my next major stop. I returned to my car and continued on lesser known roads until I reached the furthest north beach access in Marina, a secluded stretch far out of the way from anything that could be considered touristy or popular. I loaded Ilford Delta 400, a black and white film, into my camera and began the hike over the sand dunes. The trail ended, leaving a short scramble down a dune before coming face-to-face with the harsh waves.
The beach was short and steep, still recessed from the long coastal winters. The scenery was unchanged, from the distinctive shapes of particular dunes to the copse of towering driftwood branches, driven like pillars into the sand by someone long before I first stepped foot here years ago.
Like it was so many times in my memory, the beach was cold and windy. Despite the thick cloud cover it wasn’t raining, so the conditions here were already better than in Garapata. Looking up and down the beach I could only see a few people far off in either direction. Following a route I’d walked many times, I headed north. My destination was couple miles up the coast, the back of an old sand mine, the last of its kind operated on a California beach. I’d spent a lot of time out there in my last semester during the opening season of the COVID pandemic. In mid-March all in person classes were stopped. Within a couple weeks campus, along with my student neighborhood, was totally abandoned. I was fortunate enough to keep my job and decided to stay in my townhome even if classes would be online, but most others felt differently. By the end of the month I was one of two people living in my neighborhood now occupied by dozens of empty houses.
Back then I felt less alone on this beach. To reach the sand mine meant passing through a large seabird colony, and I took comfort in being surrounded by thousands of seagulls, whimbrels, sandpipers, and pelicans. Around that time I read that seagulls could live for several decades, and it seemed impactful to me that I could be wandering that harsh coast surrounded by others who had been watching the waves far longer than I’d been alive. As I got further along the coast I was happy to see than the seabirds were still there, some laying in the sand and others floating along the breaking surf. I wonder if any of them remembered me?
While the birds had remained, it seemed like the sand mine hadn’t. I knew that recently, after years of legal battles, it had finally been closed for good. My last memory of this place was the half mile wide pond of water carved into this distant stretch of beach, set back about a hundred yards from the shore into a deep valley of mountainous sand dunes. An old, rusty ship occupied the pond, anchored in place with hundreds of feet of massive chain attached to giant metal buckets on several sides of the pond. When I returned that day the ship was gone, along with the pond it had occupied. In its place was just a vast plain of level sand stretching far inland from the heaving waves. After crossing the plain and sitting at the base of the dunes for several minutes I decided it was time to go.
By this time it was getting later in the day and the wind was beginning to pick up. I missed that about living along the coast, that there always seemed to be a couple hours of relative calm in the mid afternoon as the ocean temperature rose and air currents shifted.
After stopping for yet another coffee in Monterey it was finally time to meet back up with my friends. They had fun at graduation and filled me in on the details I missed over drinks that evening. After a while out at what used to be my favorite bar in Seaside we returned to the rental and made use of the fire pit, talking about the time since we had left and what our different days had meant to us. It was almost like our old times, except our back yard in Marina wasn’t this nice, and we could never get away with a fire pit. Another difference was that I couldn’t say when I’d ever see the Monterey coast again.
The next morning I woke up early and quickly packed my bag. The sun would not be up for another hour at least, and I’m sure my friends wouldn’t wake anytime soon. I got on the road, knowing I needed to make a quick stop in San Jose to pick something up from my parent’s house. I drove, focused on making it home, and it was still mid-morning when I reached Redding for “lunch”. A little while after that I stopped for gas with Mt. Shasta looming in the distance. Several hours later I was back in Salem, feeling far more than seven hundred miles away from the weekend I just had along the the Monterey coast.
