The Lost Coast

Have you ever been to The Lost Coast? he asks, a moment after I say I need to be anywhere but LA. The Lost Coast. Mmm. I like the sound of it. I roll it around on my tongue a few times, trying it on for size. I punch it into Google. Jaw-dropping wilderness fills the screen.

A final question mark on the California coast left to scratch off like a lottery ticket. A twelve hour drive, smack in between us. With little in the way of a plan except for coordinates and cold beer, we go. One northbound for clarity, the other southbound for oblivion, chasing day light and gas tanks before they each run out of juice.

Out here black sand beaches scald the bottom of my bare feet. Icy surf soothes the burn while sending shock waves up my spine. Hairs on the back of my neck shoot up like antennas screaming stay out! as I dive in.

I brush the tips of trees whose frosted lime green leaves remind me of my own salt-bleached split ends. Summer looks the same on all of us. But I ask myself, were things always this… colorful? Were his eyes always so… yellow? Was the world always so… magenta? Is this chaos or am I dreaming? A kaleidoscope of dreams.

We marvel as banana slugs inch their way across dense forest bed beside our feet. Should we lick ‘em? he proposes. I hear they make your mouth go numb. I tilt my head back and laugh. What a silly thing to do and what a silly name for a silly creature. And it wouldn’t matter anyway. All of me is numb already.

We keep walking. We ask ourselves questions like how long is a mile? How old is a redwood? What do you learn if you stay in the same spot for 800 years? I look down at my muddied bare feet and wonder, what if instead these were roots?

Back at the river mouth, a caravan of new people set up their transient tents in our supposed secret spot. We exchange offerings and before we know it, build driftwood bonfires and share campfire stories.

One stranger in particular—was his name Caleb? No— Cody. No— Colby. I lean in, certain I’ll hear it right this time, charmed by his goofy grin, enthralled by his stories, and amused that he keeps calling himself a gypsy. I smile and squint, trying to imagine a time or place we might cross paths otherwise. I think of none, but decide I like my nameless new friend enormously. He’s another rare no-agenda-cowboy I gravitate towards as they seem to have mastered the art of simplifying and improvising, of busting redundancy into smithereens and transforming it into something else entirely.

That— and when people show you pieces of their soul, you can’t help but love them.

And for whatever reason, this feels more obvious in the dead of June when the sun doesn’t set ’til 9 and the full moon rises ‘round 10. Bathed in light day and night makes it feel like clocks are spinning backwards and all your senses are on fire and suddenly it’s easier to understand why under these cosmic spotlights, wild things can’t help but howl.

Yet eventually, this too shall pass. The moon will move on and the tide will connect with the river while we sleep and the feeling of euphoria will be replaced with bone-deep fatigue in the morning. It will be time to go. 
And at the end of the road, after a long drive and a hot shower, my eyelids drunk with sleep, I’ll ask myself, did I find what it was I came looking for, all the way out there, in The Lost Coast?