A Week on the Coast

During the last gray days of March we hopped a plane to San Francisco. A half hour after picking up our rental car at the off-site Fox Rental, we were descending the green hills of the central coast into Half Moon Bay, where the Pacific Ocean and a litany of familiar delights awaited. None of them would make a New York Times “36 Hours on the Coast” article, and with good reason, but that’s fine with us.

Our first stop was the Pillar Point State Marine Conservation Area, nestled in the reeds behind the Pilar Point Air Force Station, beyond which lies the famous Mavericks surfing zone made famous by teen surfer Jay Moriarity.  (Curtis Hanson’s last film, Chasing Mavericks (1992), isn’t great—it was made for teens—but it gets you in the mood.)  

We weren’t there to watch the surfers. We were there to see the ducks, and right on cue, we spotted seventeen cinnamon teal and six ruddy ducks out in the pond, with a lone snowy egret near shore for accent. As we climbed the hill to the ocean overlook a peregrine falcon flew by. Combine this with 60-degree sunshine, a cool ocean breeze, the smell of eucalyptus in the air, exotic flowers in bloom, and greenery everywhere, and it’s not hard to understand why we were elated.

After a late seafood lunch at Sam’s Chowder House we checked into our motel and then drove into town to wanderer the largely deserted streets of Half Moon Bay, an appealing mix of upscale, agricultural, and vacant buildings. I picked up a used paperback copy of William Matthews’ Selected Poems at the local bookstore, which was well-stocked and also featured fifty or sixty books wrapped in newsprint on sale for a dollar each. Take a chance!

The next morning we drove south a few miles along the coast, then up into the hills to the Purisima Creek Trailhead. We hiked up the canyon through the redwoods for a mile or two listening to the exotic chatter of the Pacific wrens as the filtered light of the rising sun warmed the air. We then returned north on highway 1 to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, famous for its seals and its tidepools. We’ve been there several time but had never seen the place before at low tide. Nice!

I was also pleased to discover that Pilot Light, the café alongside the local airstrip, had reopened. It used to be called 3 Zero café; now under new management, it continues to serve great food in a wide-open and unusual airstrip location. We had the sunny outdoor terrace to ourselves.

Asilomar

A two-hour drive down the coast through the bottleneck of Santa Cruz and around the dunes of Monterey Bay brought us to Asilomar Conference Center. The first time we stayed here COVID restrictions had just been lifted and there were few people in sight. Now the lodge was buzzing with people. Two conferences were in session: one sponsored by the California Land Trust, and the other by a quilting organization. At first glance I saw men in green ball caps sitting around a huge fireplace and small groups of women at card tables playing bridge (I guess). A cash bar had been set up at the far side of the room. Children were playing pool—sort of—and a woman in white was sitting at a piano nearby singling Joni Mitchell songs.

I love conferences; it’s something about the relaxed combination of sociability and intellectual exploration. But I’ve been to only a few, and never one at which I felt I “belonged.” Not at this one, for sure. I asked the man at the desk what the program was for the land trust affair, but his answer was evasive. I don’t blame him.

We were pleased to learn that our room was of the same vintage and in the same location on the sprawling, pine-dotted campus as the one we’d stayed at during our first visit. The center’s original lodgings were designed by Julia Morgan in the 1920s as a YWCA camp. These rooms are referred to on the website as “historic.” Though I’ve never actually been in one, to judge from the photos I would refer to them as Gand Canyon rustic.

The room we got was equally “historic.” But it was built of redwood during the late 50s (I guess) with twenty-foot ceilings and sliding glass doors opening out onto a small private deck. The rug, the bedspread, the paintings on the wall, all dated from—or were reminiscent of—the post-war “mid-century modern” era in the midst of which Hilary and I, and many of our friends, were raised. We had stepped into a yellowed page of Sunset Magazine.

Once we’d hauled our luggage up to the room, we wasted little time wandering down the boardwalk across the white dunes of Asilomar Dunes Natural Preserve—the last 25 acres of native dunes habitat remaining in Pacific Grove—and across the road to the beach, where we scrutinized the gulls and picked up various unidentifiable things that had been washed in by the tide. A few surf scoters were bobbing confidently between the waves fifty feet off shore. A smattering of black turnstones arrived and flitted among the rocks. And a few minutes later a flock of whimbrels appeared on the open beach from out of nowhere.    

This was grand.