Pescadero

 
There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more. – Lord Byron

 
 
Along the coast of Northern California there is a place called Pescadero Beach. Sunny days showcase the rugged cliffs and the jewel colored waters of the Pacific Ocean. Gray days transport you to a world of steel and storm and thunderous waves thrashing against the boundaries of land. When I went, a pervasive fog rode across dark skies, the air was briny and cold (even at the end of July), and the ocean was a churning blue-gray, broken by a myriad of white dashes. A young woman sat nestled into the side of a cliff, listening to music, a book propped in her lap to serve as a hard surface for the journal she wrote inside. It is one of those places that seems like the edge of the world, a place that makes you feel both empowered and exceedingly small, nothing but a thread in some glorious tapestry of life. I hold this little corner of the world in reverence; it was (is) holy to me, a place that I felt more connected to God than I have inside of any church.

If you ever get the chance to go there, sit down for a minute and breathe in the air, watch the ocean and the rolling fog, dwell in this peaceful site. In a world that is ripped apart and overdeveloped, we are blessed to have these places to wander to still. Everywhere that I go, I hope I may find as many of them as possible.

– E.M.B.