| March 29, 2011
People keep asking, what do you do when the road is closed?
So I made a list of what I did this week:
I read books, wrote letters (the kind that require paper, envelopes and stamps), baked cookies, made soup, fashioned fingerless gloves from an old sweater, embroidered a hundred roses, took naps with Miss Kitty . . .
For the past few weeks Highway One has been closed, first to the north (even to pedestrians and bicycles) and now to the south as well. With no way to get in or out, our daily routines have carried on but at a different pace. I notice the lack of electric lights at night, the increase of bird song in the mornings, the slowly dawning quiet. Life without highway traffic, delivery trucks, or 6 am garbage pickup allows other sounds to dominate, the sounds of birds, trees, water, and wind. And a growing awareness of something other than our own intentions.
Yesterday I went for a run in Pfeiffer State Park, leaping around mammoth puddles and over streams that weren’t there just a few weeks ago. I haven’t leapt around anything much in years. It reminded me of fourth grade hopscotch, of tag and kick-the-can and hide and seek. A time when we didn’t exercise, we played.
And instead of the internal dialogue that seems never to quite go away, I listened to the roaring of the river, the rush of wind in the trees, the slurry of wet leaves tumbling down sodden hills. This is our symphony, our ballet, our opera, I thought. Nature’s gifts that we are so busy protecting ourselves from or working around that we often miss them entirely.
Dodging gusts of rain and following the scurrying of my wayward thoughts, thoughts like stones skipping across a pond appearing and reappearing, I thought about the road closure, how it affects us, and why we are always so surprised.
Living in Big Sur along 80 miles of jagged coast, we are used to mud slides, power outages, and the road closures that winter often brings. But this time around the road slid out during a perfectly sunny day. The torrents of rain and 45 mph winds came later, wreaking havoc on Big Sur’s south coast, most notably at Lime Kiln and Alder Creek, closing the road for days at a time, trapping locals and visitors alike. After all, unless you have a helicopter or want to strap on your hiking boots and knee waders and hike through the back country, Highway One is our only way in or out of Big Sur.
For me, this was a time I’d already anticipated being at home, relishing a hiatus from the incessant traveling of last year. I had already planned to paint, to write, and to prepare for upcoming workshops (see below). Yet even though Nature was simply enforcing what I had already intended for myself, I was and am deeply affected, and reminded of how entwined our lives are with others, and with a primal force beyond ourselves.
In many ways, this road is our life line, a major artery bringing commerce and connecting community, allowing a stream of new life and new energy. While only 1500 or so actually call Big Sur home, three million travelers pass through Big Sur on Highway one each year, a tidal movement that cycles from trickle to flood and back again. Even the annual road closures – from a day to a week to months – are part of our normal. It is a common experience here to meet your neighbors for the first time during a road closure, to find that some feel trapped on the inside while others feel trapped on the outside. Some of us revel in the solitude, others don’t.
This morning Tom and I walked 5 miles south along Highway One, and along with the rest of the daily list the topic of the road closure came up again and again. Even though this is something we have planned for and even anticipated since the devestating fires of 2008, we all react to it as though it were an anomaly, an aberration, even a disaster. It reminds me that our way of life here is incredibly fragile, and that each moment is precious. As much as we create routine, we have to be able to abandon it at a moment’s notice, willingly or otherwise.
In other road closures I have sprung into action, organizing and coordinating, rallying and recruiting. This time around, I spent my time painting, reading, visiting with old friends, and sitting with my ailing cat, Miss Kitty, who is in her final days. The time with her has been my silver lining.
And I am reminded, once again, that all our plans are only suggestions.
Erin
For daily updates, 
(Note: Since I wrote this, pedestrian traffic has opened at Rocky Creek Bridge at 7am and 4pm daily. Yippee!) |
