For the past few years we have been renting a house for longer and longer increments, this time 2 weeks, in The Sea Ranch, Northern California. The beauty is extraordinary, and there is NOTHING to do here except walk, look at the ocean, listen to the ocean, be one with there ocean, watch the sunrise and moonrise and the sunset and moonset, and spot animals.
That’s it. That’s all I want.
We are in a house on the water and hear the roaring all night, which is both gorgeous and unsettling…we have all had nightmares. There are beautiful sunrises and sets, starry skies, moonlight on the water, whales spouting, big fat seals sunning, deer, fox, birds…you get the picture. The thing about it is…I love it. If someone offered me a deal that I could live in such a place if I would agree to never go to a play or a museum or a sight or a city ever again, I couldn’t sign fast enough. The ocean is all I care about, all I have ever cared about.
When I was a girl I dreamed of being a cabin boy for Captain Cook and sailing the South Seas.
My favorite movies were Mutiny of the Bounty, the Marlon Brando one, and Lawrence of Arabia, which evoked the ocean by the desert. The lack of domestic life was for me.
Now vacation includes the domestic, cleaning someone else’s rented house, washing their towels, sponging their counters. I wish I could wash the windows that have become thick with days of morning dew mixed with dust from the bluff trail but there is no equipment for that. My view now is hazy.
I knew I’d see a snake, and yesterday I did. I haven’t written here about my snake phobia and how I spent the pandemic working to get over it, which I have. Not to the point of going near one or touching one, but I can see one now and walk past the spot where I saw it, and walk in the same place again. Once I listed all the snakes I’d seen, and all the invitations and opportunities I’d turned down for fear of seeing one. Both lists were long. Now my snake eye is less attuned and I am willing to try new places. The world is very different without a debilitating phobia.
I should say though that one of the bad dreams I mentioned above was a snake dream.
My best vacay moment: a walk along the bluff trail, the sparkling, loud, exuberant sea by my side. What a glorious best friend!
And then…south of here, but cutting off access to the highway, a fire sprang up. So a scrambling for another night, an inland route, another flight. I am still working and so have money to throw at such a problem.
That was wrapped up in my constant awareness these days of my own good luck, and my constant awareness at the same time of the insane amount of unnecessary pain on the planet at this moment. The intertwining of these two is bittersweet.
The Sea Ranch has many rules and principles, all based on the concept of living lightly on the land. That humans think there is any other way is the wrong thing to do with our supposedly big brains. Care for this earth and its creatures and each other. A simple plan.
As always, my dead have been with me, and I share this beauty with them. It’s enough to make death seem a beautiful opportunity for togetherness.
I am watching the white caps break on the sea stack just beyond the bluff. This is all I want. Oh! And paper, and pens, and books, and friends, and my family, and pets, and…
But I have been reset to live lightly within the pull of desire. Not much is needed. Every day, wake up and wonder, what path do I follow to add positively to this world?
To walk lightly. To listen for whales and know they are near. To have the stars on the sea. Thank you for giving this to all of us.
A week or two by the ocean will cure what ails you.