Sleeping Beasts: Central California

I could tell you a lot of things about the central California coast. I could tell you that it’s a desolate and ethereal fairyland, or that the sky peeking through the ubiquitous fog is impossibly blue.

I could tell you that the long, thin pines look like castle spires rising from the hills, or that the waves seem to break slower here, sweeping the shore with a luxurious melancholy. I could tell you that the air seems to ache with a tragic romance.

What I really want to tell you about, though, is elephant seals.

About 5 miles North of San Simeon, there’s a stretch of beach where, at certain times of year, you can witness large numbers of elephant seals doing what they do best: sleeping.

Actually, sleeping really doesn’t begin to cover it. These creatures, which look more or less like giant blubber burritos that started growing limbs and then thought better of it, are capable of a level of passed-outness I have never seen in any other life form. (The only thing I can think of that comes close is maybe a toddler, if someone gave them a Four Loko and set them loose in a bouncy castle for three hours.) Their giant bodies are flopped on the beach in such devout agreement with gravity that you almost don’t register them as living creatures at first.

At first you’re like, “who left like 20 giant sandbags on the beach and then drove over them with a truck?” But then one of them rolls over to scratch its chin with a stubby flipper, or lifts its eponymously oversized snout to emit a sound that’s not unlike someone starting up a weedwhacker.

What little energy they possess during this time seems to be used hauling their 5,000-pound bodies into battle with one another, which mostly entails a lot of aggressive chest-bumping. Occasionally it looks as if they might be trying to bite each other, but haven’t quite figured out how to do so without swallowing their own noses.

In short: my heart has found a new keeper, and it is the elephant seal. I highly recommend getting yourself to a place where you can observe them in the wild — and then taking a long nap afterwards, because believe me, no one can make sleeping look so good.

Silent Giants: Sequoia National Forest, CA

After Santa Barbara, we had about a week to make it up to San Francisco, where we’d be celebrating Sean’s birthday. We decided to make our way North via the Sequoia National Forest, since neither of us had ever been. On our first night, we landed in a little campground called Sandy Flats.

This campground was perched right on the Kern River, and while it was blissfully free of chipmunks, we did discover one rodent friend:

This was very exciting, but not as exciting as when I thought I saw an otter swimming next to the beaver. (Turns out it was just a second, smaller beaver. My zoology game is not what it could be.)

The next day we woke up early to hike to Miracle Hot Springs, a lovely little collection of stone pools fed by a natural spring that sits right by the river. We couldn’t find the proper route on the way in, but we managed to reach it through a combination of intuition and willingness to pretty much just slide down a hill on our butts. Fortunately, the long soak must have cleared our heads a little, because we found an established path on our way out with no trouble.

After the springs, we drove to a sequoia grove called Trail of 100 Giants. The grove itself isn’t very large, but what it lacks in area it makes up for in height.

Almost all of the mature trees had long, black gashes in the center, scars from forest fires that must have happened before the younger trees sprouted. Some of them you could even climb into; I circled one of the larger sequoias at least three times looking for Sean before I finally heard his voice coming from inside.

How DOES one get hired as a Keebler elf?

At first glance, the trees seemed to be all more or less the same; the more you explored, however, the more their differences became apparent. Some trees were conjoined with their neighbors, trunks fused together in their soft youth. One had a great knobby plateau growing out of its base to make a perfect natural bench. Here and there you could see a fallen tree, its root system exposed, a gaping crater left where it used to grow.

Once we’d filled our eyes and exhausted our necks, we popped into the gift store, where we asked the clerk for her favorite local spots. She recommended a nearby trail that led to a waterfall, “just past the three boulders and the pile of sawdust.” Her directions proved to be accurate.

We’d now experienced both a natural bath and a natural shower — neither of which made us anything close to clean, but we’re learning that sometimes adventurers just don’t get to smell good. (You should still let us visit you and sleep on your couch, though.)

Camping life has also meant sporadic Internet access, but we’re back in wifi-land now, and will be catching up with ourselves before long. Stay tuned, good people!

Home (Away from Home) Sweet Home: Santa Barbara, CA

After the natural beauty and punishing temperatures of Joshua Tree, we moseyed towards the coast to stay with some family friends who’ve known me since I was in cloth diapers. About twenty years ago, Lisa and David left the small town I grew up in and moved to Santa Barbara, California.

Why they chose this place over rural Iowa is anyone’s guess.

Since then, a string of relatives and family friends have moved to the West coast: my aunt helps run a permaculture school in Cuyama Valley, my uncle and grandma now live up in Chico, my brother went to UCSB — I even lived in Santa Barbara for a couple short stints, working for some local beekeepers and struggling to acclimate to the perfect weather. (In the Midwest, one becomes accustomed to spending half the year in a pre-emptive cower.)

After almost two months of camping, couch-surfing, and venturing through strange territory, Lisa and David’s place was like an oasis of familiarity. I mean, look at this fridge map and tell me you don’t feel comforted:

We spent our days in Santa Barbara roaming the city, wandering State Street and playing with strangers’ dogs at the beach. In the evenings we hung out with Lisa and David and my brother, Van, who had recently made the wise decision to move back to Santa Barbara from Colorado Springs.

In retrospect, Sean was definitely plotting something in this picture.

Santa Barbara is nestled between the mountains and the Pacific, with red tile roofs and palm trees as far as the eye can see. It’s where famous people go when they’re old and just want to chill in their mansions and use the word “terroir” a lot, but it’s also much more than that.

But I mean really, does it NEED to be more than that? Look at that view.

We were also lucky enough to catch a show at Soho featuring Jan Smith, a phenomenal local musician who also happens to be my aunt.

A few days later we went to visit Jan at the eco-village where she lives, out in the desert a couple hours from Santa Barbara. Usually teeming with visiting groups and students, the property was quiet in the summer heat. We stayed in a sweet little cob house that was constructed by a teenage girl during one of the eco-village’s natural building courses. (In my teenage years, I could barely construct a clean outfit — but hey, we all walk our own paths, okay?)

Being back in Santa Barbara reminds me of coming here as a beach-dazzled teenager, back when anywhere outside of Iowa seemed boundless and exotic. I feel fortunate to have had a rural childhood that was quiet but immensely full, and also to have had the opportunity to roam and explore so much as an adult. From here we’ll be venturing into more of the unknown, but I’m happy to know our way will be blessed with plenty of familiar faces.