Same time, next year

(WILMINGTON, N.C.) — I am still in North Carolina, but yes, I am going to do a short post about another state again. Soon I will be all caught up, at least I hope. It’s still strange to be hit with so many new places and so many experiences at once, especially after doing about five years of newspaper jobs, all of which had a definite structure to them. For all their stress, I loved them, and I hope to go back to that world someday. But right now, it feels right to be out of it. Before I started at papers, I had no sense of what my profession might be. Then, after working at one daily publication as a photographer and then at another as an arts and enterainment editor, I felt as though I had a defined career. I kind of liked the ring of that, of being able to say that I was a working journalist. Now, I’m back out on the wide open seas and while it sometimes gets me down, I think I’m at ease with it. I’ve got no title, no concrete profession and no set game plan. I only know that I want to keep writing. Sometimes all this feels perfect, and sometimes it feels lame. But at least it is mine.

Anyway, for the last few weeks I was in Northern California visiting my family as I attempted to figure out exactly what I am doing next. I get to do this about once a year, so I tried to savor it. I didn’t come up with many answers, but being in that part of the world was an answer to something in itself. It reminded me how much I miss that place. San Rafael, where I mostly grew up, doesn’t have its hooks in me much, but Arcata, where I went to college, really does. I love the cold and the green and the overall feeling in the air that everything is, as we NorCal kids really do say, “all good.” No matter where I am on the coast between the Oregon border and San Francisco, I get that feeling full blast.

One spot I visited in particular was Mendocino, a historic little town on Hwy. 1. I lived there for a few years in my childhood, and now it’s like my secret lover from the past with whom I can never actually settle down. It’s beautiful and quiet, a kind of sanctuary, and I love it perhaps more than anywhere I have ever lived. When it comes to pristine, breathtaking beaches, craggy tide pools and undeveloped ocean front, nowhere in the East has anything on that town. But I can’t move back. It’s no place to be young, unless you have a great game plan that can include living in a community of 1,000. I have a friend who moved away from there when she was in her twenties or thirties because she knew she would never find a man in all that rugged beauty. That was the 1970s, and I can’t imagine anything has changed that in that department since.

But my heart still lives there, part-time at least. Here are some pictures from Mendocino and the miles of Hwy. 1 that connects the village and its surroundings to San Francisco.

I miss it already.

Hwy. 1 on a cloudy, cold weekday. My favorite kind of day.

Somewhere between Mendocino and Pt. Arena.

Moo. Somewhere between Mendocino and Gualala.

There's one in every family.

I love this.

Mendo headlands.

Mendocino, a fuller view.

A Mendocino ritual I have yet to do.

Portuguese Beach, two blocks from my old house in Mendocino.