Pacific

Maybe now I know why they call it the Pacific.

I had planned to stay in the near vicinity of the hostel where I am staying this afternoon. I was going to go out, find the place where I am going to meet up with someone tomorrow, get some food, pick up toothpaste at Walgreen’s (to replace the Tom’s of Maine toothpaste that security confiscated at the airport), and go back to my room for a quiet evening.

I did, in fact, accomplish those things, in precisely that order, but in between the food and the toothpaste, I had an added, quite unexpected adventure.

It all happened because of this artist photographer here that I was hoping to meet up with. Incidentally, it turns out he is headed out of town, so he didn’t really have time. But just in case, I decided I should check out the Haight-Ashbury area, since that, I believe, is where his studio is located. I also saw on my map the Golden Gate Park was out there, and I thought it might be nice to walk around, maybe even see the Golden Gate Bridge on my first day.

So I got on the 71 bus and headed out that way. When we got into the Haight-Ashbury area, I got off and walked so I could take in the shops better. I didn’t go into any, but I enjoyed looking in the windows. Then, toward the end of Haight Street, I spotted Amoeba records, which a friend of mine had told me about. And there was Golden Gate Park. As I crossed the street, there was a couple headed out that way. The girl made eye contact with me and asked if I wanted to do something. I don’t know what it was. Some kind of slang for some kind of drug, I don’t know what. Anyway, I politely declined. Then it occurred to me that rather than being a nice family-friendly park, maybe this was the kind of park where people came to do drugs. It did kind of appear that way, and I mostly felt out of place. It was so beautiful, though, with big, majestic trees in the haze of the setting sun. There was a playground, however, and an art studio, and several joggers. So it wasn’t all people with bongos and glazed looks.

And that’s when I got the idea that maybe if I just walked through the park, I could catch the sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge. It looked simple enough on the map. And when I got through the corner of the park and looked down the main road, I could see the Pacific right there. All I had to do was walk. I probably didn’t even need to get on the bus.

But that road was a lot longer than it looked. A lot longer. And when the map I had said that this particular area of the city was “not to scale,” what they apparently meant was that for every block they showed, there were at least ten – maybe twelve – in real life. So I did get on a bus. The 16XB or something like that. And that was good. But then it started going up this hill and I didn’t know where we were going. So I got off. And I kept walking toward the water. And walking. And walking. And walking. The street seemed to never end. And then I thought I might head uphill and maybe I could see the bridge from there. No dice. I kept walking west, toward the sunset. And I could see it was getting later. I picked up the pace because I didn’t want to miss it, and I knew the later it got, the darker my ride home.

So then I was on Jonah Street, heading downhill. And still walking. I could swear the ocean was just one giant mirage that kept moving at the same pace that I was going as I went forward, like a rainbow. You could keep chasing and chasing and never catch it. And the sky was getting darker and darker. I was sure the sun was below the horizon now. And the streets were mostly deserted. I wondered if I should feel unsafe. But I just walked confidently on, and the further I got, the more determined I was to reach the ocean. I had come this far. How could I give up now? Sure, I could cut my losses and get home early, but where would be the satisfaction in that? And I thought maybe I should because my knee started to hurt, and I worried, briefly, that it would give out, and I would be stranded in a remote corner of a strange city and who knows what would happen to me. But I pushed that thought aside and adjusted my gait so that my knee didn’t hurt so much on the descent downhill.

I probably walked forty or fifty blocks. I don’t even know. When I saw the train cars turning around I knew that I was nearly there. And I saw cars crossing perpendicular to the road I was on. Yes. This was it. I was approaching the “Golden Gate Recreation Area.” This was a yellow strip on the map. When I crossed the street, I found it was a beach.

And the sunset was still there, an intense swath of vermillion and rose with an aura of green and a crown of purple, veined with purple-orange clouds. And beneath it, there were waves like I have never seen before. And I stopped only to remove my shoes and feel the sand between my toes as I walked straight for the water. I was going to touch it. I was going to stand in it. This morning, I got out of bed at 3:00 a.m. in cold, gray Boston, and tonight, I am standing in the Pacific, surrounded and swallowed by color. This is what I saw.



So as I walked toward the water, as if there were a magnet drawing me, I let the cuffs of my jeans drag in the wet sand. And I didn't care when the lip of the next wave swirled around my legs to mid-calf. I was so enthralled and alive, it didn't matter.

I drank in the sunset for as long as I could, watching the waves until another one sopped my jeans and I decided that was the ocean telling me: enough, it’s time to go home. So with my shoes and socks full of sand and my jeans wet practically to the knee, I headed back with that spectacular sunset indelibly printed on my mind. That, to me, was peace.