I started two different drafts for this week’s BeSoothed. I liked them both, they were getting at something maybe sort of interesting, but ultimately they felt dry. Depressing. Negative. The humming that ideally happens when you write or create something actually interesting to yourself just wasn’t there. “A plod to create, a plod to consume”, I always say, so to the backlog those went. What I really want is something lovely. There is already so much negative, and yes I often write about conflicting beauty, but maybe today I just want beauty.
Recently a memory flooded back while I was being interviewed for Calling in Sick’s podcast, discussing a moment that is the pure feeling of bike riding for us. I described in high level this day and now it’s what comes to my mind when I crave that sort of lazy, summer haze.
I think it was actually early fall because like so much of California, the enjoyable part of summer actually comes around in September, and the part of the central coast I was living in was not immune to that. At the time I lived with a couple of friends and worked for a small startup run by another couple of friends and we had basically nothing to do but hang out with each other. Some days we’d lay in our backyard we were too lazy to fix up, or drag ourselves to the beach but when the need for something slightly more, we would go out to the river.
Back in the hills behind the coastal town the heat stayed trapped a little more. The oaks were crispy but evergreen and most small highways crumbled into a dirt road eventually. Reservoirs twinkled in the valleys, small streams skipped between them and smooth sandstone rocks littered the area, providing ample and accessible swimming holes. A few of us drove my 1983 Volvo wagon out to a particular trailhead that was coveted because the best swimming holes were nearby, but only accessible via foot or by bike. Stuffed in the back with the other bikes was my dilapidated Schwinn something-or-other—missing cables and gears and I think a brake it was red and a step through and I rode it to everything. To work, to the country bar to drink Bud heavies, to the beach and now to swim. As this was impromptu, it ended up being a weird mix of people—like when Elaine and George are supposed to go to the movies without Jerry, but it didn’t matter for us. The heat and possibly the end of the workday had fueled us to just get out of town and there is something bonding when you leave one place and find yourself in another. You are suddenly a group, suddenly allies when you maybe hadn’t been before.
Empty except for one or two other dusty cars, the parking lot seemed like the precursor to nothing unless you knew to look for the trodden path behind a trash can and some trees, which thankfully our one friend knew about. We strapped towels and chips and beers to our bikes and peddled out amongst the oak trees. Equally as important as the shade or cooling effect non-paved areas have, is the smell. Blooming up from the tree litter and fine dirt, the familiar California oak-woodland smell of sun-soaked forest floor is the smell of freedom, to me. Flip flops on platform pedals, creaking old bike and the smell of the oaks and dirt guided us along the path until little glimmers of the river revealed itself and finally the swimming hole we’d been after.
Because it was cradled in a ravine, the swimming area was shaded by the time of the day so we stopped earlier to jump in and cool off at a sunny, pebbly, shallow beach. Delicately placing beer cans in the cool water to act as our non-existent ice cooler, we laughed as the river carried a few off and got better at wedging them under a rock or two. Not knowing each other super well or having deep history to join us together meant that the extent of our conversations were shallow as well, light and silly or silent for long stretches. I rested with my hat over my face, letting my body settled over the warm rocky shore, easily willing a moment of calm and an empty mind.
The on to the deep swimming holes. Areas of burgeoning deep, moody green water marked the areas that were ok to jump off the boulders of sandstone lining the water. I sat on top of one for a while, clutching my knees to my chest, contemplating if I really had to or not. Eventually I scrambled down, happy to be back in the shallower area, happy to be seeking adventure simply by cooling off in the late summer heat.
The day crept on and as sunset started, we decided to pack up our crushed cans and river-soaked towels and meander back to the car. The warm day folded around us as we rode through the delicate light remaining, skimming through small river crossings and patches of sunset. My car waited alone in the parking lot and somehow had shrunk or the stuff we carried had grown because repacking the wagon was sloppy and lazy this time but no matter. We were sun-tired and wrung out, glowing and smelling of river water and oak litter. The perfect memory before it was even over, and lodged forever in my mind as a time I felt true peace and simple joy.
I hope you have memories like these—either old or more recent. I’m always amazed how a mundane afternoon stays with me. How does it stay so powerful? How does it haze and blur around the edges but I can still smell and feel that afternoon? Maybe I’m still there, maybe there is a me that never left and gets to hear the cicadas and trickling, cool river forever.
Thank you for reading.
xoxo
BeSoothed