GATHERING QUIET MOMENTS, GIRDING FOR WHAT’S AHEAD

This is how I’m staying sane during this insane election season.

A couple of weeks ago, Mick and I spent a week in California visiting Pacific Grove, Big Sur, and Monterey. We hiked among redwoods and alongside the Pacific Ocean, rested, sipped wine, read, ignored the news and reclaimed a slower pace that feels healthier than what we’ve been doing. It’s so seductive, feeling like we have to stay on top of the news, get stuff done, say yes to invitations that fill our calendars until there’s no space left. I’m very good at giving away my time until I realize I have left none for myself. So, a reset was just the thing. Not only that, but we had Mick’s birthday to celebrate.

Flying directly into the five-gate Monterey airport from Minneapolis proved to be a good choice for starting our vacation/reset. Picking up our rental car was easy, and the route to our hotel took about 15 minutes. We had a room booked at the Centrella Hotel in Pacific Grove, and we arrived just in time for their nightly wine tasting. After enjoying some nice pinot noir, we took a two-block walk up the hill to dinner at a local Italian restaurant, La Mia Cucina, where we sat at a little table in back and enjoyed some wonderful classic spaghetti and meatballs for Mick and fresh fish for me. The evening closed with a post-dinner walk back down the hill, fog rolling in, and we were enchanted. 

That fog was still there early the next morning. We woke before breakfast was available in the hotel dining room, our bodies still on Minnesota time. We decided to walk down to Lover’s Point to get some exercise.  Big, crashing waves greeted us, and some well-seasoned surfers floated in the roiling water, waiting for a good wave. We watched them for at least half an hour. A relaxed sea otter hung out in the waves just behind the surfers, little paws working on his breakfast. I was surprised at how many people were out so early in the foggy morning, running, walking dogs, watching the ocean. We felt at home. The fog was no less thick when we returned to the Centrella, got coffee, ate yogurt parfaits, and talked about our plans for the day. We decided to walk to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, since it was only a mile away and our rental car was fine parked on the street until later. We arrived just in time to see two humpback whale flukes in the bay. Everyone at the aquarium was excited about the whales, crowded around the observation area, phone cameras rolling. We took it as an auspicious moment, a sign that we were going to see some wonderful things in the week to come.

We weren’t wrong.

After two nights in Pacific Grove, we headed south on Highway 1 to Big Sur, where we had a cabin reserved at Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn. The place is rustic: wood-stove heated cabins, no cell service, no wi-fi, no televisions, dim room lighting. One emergency phone lived on the side of one of the main buildings. Cats meandered in the gardens and made themselves at home on the hoods of cars with still-warm engines. Redwoods surrounded everything. The sound of the ocean shushed and boomed just across the road. Hummingbirds zipped around the flowers still blooming in mid-October, sometimes narrowly missing my head.

Deetjen’s is where we really relaxed, found the quiet inside ourselves. It was our base for a few hikes in nearby  Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park and Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, where we were reminded that we are used to hiking on much flatter ground. The restaurant at Deetjen’s is well-known for its locally-sourced breakfasts and dinners, simple and hearty preparation, and a coziness that other places nearby lack. In our cabin, I started reading Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, which felt like just the right kind of book for those surroundings. Given that the Franklin Room we stayed in was built in the 1940s, when Cannery Row came out, and that we had just strolled along the actual Cannery Row only a day before, I felt transported in a way that never would have happened if I read the book at home. 

But the real gift of Deetjen’s was time among the redwoods. Mick loves redwoods more than anyone else I know, and he drank them in. On our last morning there, we just sat for a while near a little waterfall on the property, inhaling the scent of the redwoods and relishing how disconnected we were from the rest of the world in those moments.

We could have stayed there the entire time.

But we didn’t. We had our last room for the week reserved in Monterey, a nice room with a fireplace that was walking distance from the old Monterey downtown area and fisherman’s wharf. In Monterey, we were back to noise and lots of people and traffic, but that was okay. Walking to so many places was easy, we found one of the best taco trucks ever (Wedo’s), enjoyed a simple breakfast at the Old Monterey Cafe, sampled local beer at the Dust Bowl Brewing Company, and used Monterey as a base to go do some wine tasting at three different places. 

The site in Monterey we visited every day that we were there was, of course, where the sea lions have taken over an area near San Carlos Beach. There is a national marine sanctuary in Monterey Bay. I finally learned the difference between sea lions and harbor seals (sea lions have ear flaps and harbor seals don’t, sea lions bark loudly and harbor seals don’t). I also learned that massive groups of sea lions smell awful, but they are hilarious to watch.

Coming home from such a magical week in California was jarring. I am so grateful that we had the chance to take a break during this election season, that we could come back home rested and somewhat ready for what is coming. I’ve been thinking about the quiet of that week a lot since we’ve been back, tucking away little pieces of solace that I know I’ll be calling up in the weeks to come.

all photos by kcmickelson 2024