If you drove across the country in 1998, you would have looked at a road atlas a lot. I’m not sure if the rise of in-car GPS systems is a particularly bad thing in this respect. It’s kind of hard to negotiate the 405 with an 11 x 17 folio open on your lap. Suffice it to say that I have a greater appreciation for the music of Guy Clark after actually driving on a freeway in LA. The other thing about the road atlas is that it has this picture on the front of a place so idyllic that it could not possibly exist. So you can imagine my surprise as I came around a bend on the Pacific Coast Highway to find the scene on my atlas displayed in my windshield.
Now there is a place that makes you just want to put on a fleece and settle in with a cup of coffee, doesn’t it? The PCH is sort of California’s answer to the Blue Ridge Parkway (guess what non-existent place is on the 2011 atlas, by the way.) It did not take long driving along this road to feel the tension of city driving drain out of my shoulders. They don’t call it the Pacific Ocean for nothing. With the peaceful sea to my left, mountains climbed to my right in an illustration of the moment the seas were separated from the dry land. North of Santa Barbara, the California coast is a testament to the presence of a divine influence on creation.
Such observations might have been made by this dude in his car as he watched the gulls turning circles over the ocean. If you can’t tell, he’s done this car right, roof rack and everything. It seemed like it was there at the creation of this whole scene. I understood, on a cellular level, the whole thing. California, the Beetle, Big Sur, John Scofield. I had that album that Scofield put out with Medeski, Martin, and Wood, “A Go Go.” I liked it, but I didn’t really get it. I didn’t really get it because I thought it was somehow lazy or too cool. Driving up the Pacific Coast Highway, I got it’s subtlety. It’s in the shine of a hub cap, or not knowing what it around the bend. The things that make the trip interesting are the little things you see on the drive.