How to describe the light that erupts along the central coast of California? From the oak-studded ranch land around Pozo, where my mother grew up in the shadows of the Los Padres National Forest, I climbed over the Cuesta Grade through the Santa Lucia mountain range and dropped down to the Pacific shore. There, I found Pismo Beach. Long gone are the dark, grey-wacky sands of the northwest coast where redwoods loom. The shoreline here is broad, pale and smooth. My shoes are off in an heartbeat. I stand, watching a large sandpiper with a long, curved beak. A whimbrel. The bird is fishing with enthusiasm in the tidal flow.
I suppose I am, too. Fishing for a way to stand in the shifting sands of a writer’s life, to hold my position in the movement of the tides and the explosive sunshine that bleaches everything I thought I knew.
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