To lose all sense of time in the thick mists of the sea

You try driving along the coast of northern California on a tight schedule: it can not be done. Masayo and I left the grungy town of Eureka this morning with plans to tool around the Port Reyes National Seashore area most of the day, then head to a hotel just south of San Francisco for the night.

Oh it was a fine plan, and that’s basically what ended up happening, but the Port Reyes NS part was crammed into a short period of time because just getting there took forever: the coastal highway is so amazing, and the turnouts and diversions so plentiful, that you’re lucky to make any good time at all. And there’s no way you could care.

The vast Pacific Ocean stretches out from the edge of the continent, virtually forever, and the land gives the big blue water a suitable sendoff. The road winds around constant sharp curves, frequently opening up into sections where, across brief fields of gold-hued grass and the occasional tree, all blown sideways by the unbroken winds, lie dramatic rocky cliffs falling down into far small beaches where tall waves crash. The colors of the sunny sea, deep blue and splashing white, go well with the yellow and green of the sparse and hearty vegetation.

And over everything, shifting and slowly dissipating mists of fog, especially over the rocky peaks on the other side of the road. Northern California is an embarrassment of natural riches.

Oh, sure, we’ll just speed by all this to get to Port Reyes, all right.

In fact, of course, we kept pulling off the road to see this view and that, to snap photos and take in the gigantic and primordial entity churning right below us. We eventually made it to Port Reyes but it was getting late and much foggier, and we only saw San Francisco by dusk after the briefest of drives through the great burg. It was a day of slowness and then unfortunate hurrying up.

Lunch was a highlight: Masayo and I parked the car and walked through a field to the grassy edge of a cliff for a picnic. I had an especially scenic blood sugar check with my One Drop meter; I was 205. High, but better than it was at breakfast time at least.

And the wind blew the smell of the sea onto us, and we help down our packets of guacamole and hummus and crackers and cottage cheese while our heads darted left and right, looking up and down the coast and its gargantuan round boulders laying just off the beaches and withstanding repeated kaleidoscopic attacks from the incessant surf.

Port Reyes National Seashore, a large spot on the map that we added to this trip at the very last minute, having never heard of it, is just north of the San Francisco Bay area. When we arrived it was mid-afternoon and at the visitor center a ranger told us that driving to the ends of the park takes quite a bit of time and we probably couldn’t see everything and get to Redwood City in good time. Then he embarked on a discursive gripe about how the roads were never properly fixed after the 1989 earthquake… but stopped himself before getting too worked up about it.

One of Port Reyes’s main sightseeing spots is its lighthouse, way out at the end of a long road in the southwestern corner. Masayo and I started the drive, which was remarkable all by itself: the paved road, frequently straight, occasionally curving, and nearly always cracked and rugged, takes you through rolling green hills and big agricultural-looking fields. Everything – the cows, the gated dirt side roads, the wet grass, our car – was encased in heavy fog. Somewhere to our right was the ocean, but it was invisible. The only water we could see was in the form of ponds which sat as flat white patches, mirrors reflecting the thick white mist in contrast with soggy green-yellow turf.

Our car bounced and shook down the little two-lane road until we finally arrived at the lighthouse. Or, rather, the lighthouse parking area: surprisingly full of cars, the parking area extended to either side of the approach road for several thousand feet; we parked here and joined a few other tourists on the hike up another paved road, closed to cars, that led to the lighthouse.

At the top, after trudging through fog so thick that it felt like walking through see-through pillows, we became the final visitors of the day at the small visitor center; the friendly ranger let us look around briefly but shooed us out so he could lock up. I reflected that we should have been here hours ago – but what could we do?

Past the visitor center is a long, straight set of stairs that lead to the lighthouse itself. People we walking up them, but not down, because the ranger was standing at the top and not letting people go. Which means we couldn’t go, even after coming all this way, to visit the famous lighthouse at Port Reyes.

But it was probably just as well: we couldn’t even see it from here, and the arduous hike down and back didn’t really seem like it would be worth it, fun though it might prove. We couldn’t even see much of the staircase, it too disappearing partway down into the moist, murky grey. People would suddenly appear at its edge, struggling up the steep straight stairs. I wondered what they had seen at the bottom. The vague suggestion of a lighthouse-shaped ghost, I assumed.

We hiked back to the car, mist filling our lungs and weariness settling into our legs; it has of course been a while since we did much hiking on this trip. Although we did manage to spot the world’s most picturesque deer in a field between us and the foggy ocean on the way down, that’s about all we saw. Clouds were everywhere, at ground level and below, and we merry and awe-struck visitors were lucky to have seen Port Reyes like this. Some get sweeping views and the lovely antique lighthouse experience; others get something darker, weirder, and in its way more rewarding.

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