Central Valley and the Coast:  A Guide

Belmar.

Drive on Ocean Road and you can see the half-eaten remnant of the coast.  Here a pile of bowling ball-sized rocks, once hard rectangles, now barely recognizable as rectilinear things, in their present form more like gigantic grey and blue beans or rock candy.  There a tuft of salal and sea pink arcing in a wave over a cove of yellow and orange sand, like a teddy boy's hairstyle.  And further on a sign warning pedestrians away from the edge, itself slowly toppling, more eloquent in its attitude than in its original purpose.  If you are a scofflaw you will be rewarded by the hidden treasure of an old concrete staircase, now part of the tidepool garden it accessed.  It descends to greater depths hidden by sand and jagged volcanic rock; its rusting handrail helps no one appreciate the beauty of the public beach.  Around it spews a meringue of foam.  A distance back of the sea pink and yellow-green grass, safe for now apparently, lies a small parking lot and battered brown message board, covered with warnings and regulations and a barely-readable tide table encased in plastic.  

One evening Don's crew cab occupies the space close to the board.  He and Carrie Taylor sit in the truck, watching the spume rise and fall like New Year's confetti.  Occasionally the shore pines and salal bushes strain toward the rocks and surf, as if they were trying for a better view.  Don, not given to such things generally, hears himself saying "My dad's down there somewhere."  Carrie turns to him.  "Down where?  In the ocean?"  He looks beyond the cove below the parking lot, into the lowering grey over the horizon.  Where was the horizon exactly?  Where did the sky end and the ocean begin?  He had never thought of it before, but on the coast, there was so much water in the sky all the time, you could say the ocean flowed up in a way.  And the clouds, weren't they just as much soil as water?  Dust particles and so on?  So the land was up there too.  Without taking his eyes off the distant wash, he says "What am I doing here Carrie?"  He hears her say "You think too much."  She takes his hand and gives it a squeeze.