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On Darkness Before Sunrise
When I was informed that the sunrise at Mishe Mokwa was spectacular I did what I rarely do, I showed up to the the trailhead before sunrise for the last segment of the hike. From the top of the mountains of Malibu (elevation 3,200) to the Pacific ocean (elevation 0) at the Ray Miller trailhead in Pt. Mugu State Park 16.5 miles away (except 19.5 miles for me because of a wrong turn). PCH which usually has a view of the Pacific Ocean was inky dark as I headed to the Ventura County Line.
I had just walked for 4 days. I took my first step not knowing if I could do this. The first day I walked 16.5 miles in a pair of sneakers and was exhausted when I got home. The next day, my left leg didn’t feel like my right leg. It was numb and stiff. I lay in bed not wanting to get up, knowing how easy it would be stay in bed and not continue. Then I checked inward and thought my legs are strong, I had not had a recent injury. Maybe it was my shoes? Maybe it was my pace? I decided to change my shoes adjust my pace, take some ibuprofen and just see how it went one step at a time. So the second day went, one step at a time. Same with the third and fourth, one step at a time. I had just walked from Northern Santa Monica to the Ventura County Line.
I have surfed every wave from Manhattan Beach in Los Angeles County to Rincon in Santa Barbara County. I have stared into a whale’s eye paddling around Point Dume. I know this water. I have been up and down PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) hundreds of times. I know this road. I didn’t know where I was until this walk.
I forgot that we were connected to nature and that nature made the path and that we were also connected to the path. Its easy to forget, especially when we never knew. I had walked all of this. One step at a time. Breathing it all in exhaling it all out. Smelling it, tasting it learning it, knowing it and now remembering it. And its glorious. So achingly beautiful as a geography as a topography as a morphology as a path as a place.
This was all in me when I drove in the inky darkness on PCH to Ventura. It just hit me and when it did I did something else that I rarely do I burst out crying. Maybe it was because I couldn’t see the pacific ocean. That expanse of blue living magic that takes over your senses and makes everything else seem so small when you see it.
But all I saw was the road and the buildings on it and it overwhelmed me how paradise had been transformed. That was reality but not why I burst our crying. It was because of our individual and social delusion around this place we think is beautiful when it is has been destroyed and we are unaware of its destruction and are deluded to thinking it is something else.
To have a house on the coast, on Broad Beach in Point Dume is what we aspire to, it is seen as success when it is a desecration of place not a celebration of it. In the inky darkness of pre-morning light it hit me, how the crowning achievement of modern society in Los Angeles the American dream if you will, is a nightmare.