I needed to research some critics on John Steinbeck last night, but instead I looked over my new Benchmark map of California and started dreaming about going back there again. I miss California’s coastal beauty, its lush greenness and its open trails. Reading some of Steinbeck’s short stories hasn’t helped much, either. Like him, I feel a love for the Monterey Bay area but also an estrangement as well. His own people chased him out of the state and he settled in the cultural antithesis of California, namely New York City. I fled California and settled in New Jersey.
I need to go back to Monterey and central California. I want to hike Big Sur again. I want to hike those old hiking trails that took me above the marine layer and into a sphere of heavenly existentialism. I want to hike around the Coulter Pines, smell the cones and whiff in some ocean salt. I want to feel as if I am above the edge of the earth again.
So, when shall this trip be? Who knows. I don’t even know if I’m going to summer school this year. I don’t really want to; my restless spirit is calling me back on the road again. I have people and places in California I want to experience again, and so many more places I never got to see before.
If I go to California this May I could see the old friends I’m been longing to see. There’s Karen in Los Gatos, Dennis in Monterey, Daureen in Marin County. My old neighbor Lisa is still in Pacific Grove and Bob from my old high school is in the Bay Area. I certainly won’t be lacking human companionship.
My trip, however, will be a trek back into time. I want to recapture that lost spirit of my California days and this time thank it for those restless days, those sleepless nights and all the loneliness and pain I felt during that time. It’s not that I want that loneliness back, or the pain and agonies I fought against during those years. I want to go back there and thank it for making me a better person in the long run. I survived California. I therefore can survive anywhere. And I have.
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