Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus (A GeoEx eBook)

Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus

Starting Over: A Pilgrimage to Stinson Beach

closet for my safari hat and sandals, slathered on sunscreen for the first time in a year, and prepared some proper pilgrim provisions—peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, carrot sticks, granola bars, Gatorade, and Frappuccinos. Step by step, these accumulated preparations took on the air of a religious rite. Of course, I also added hand sanitizer, blue nitrile gloves, and a red bandana mask. I would follow a thoroughly 2020 path. Wednesday was a sparkling day. The temperature was in the 70s, and the sky was robin’s egg blue with fleecy white clouds that looked like cotton candy from a county fair. I packed everything in the car, opened the windows and the sunroof, and began to drive toward the Richmond-San Rafael bridge. I make this journey a few dozen times a year, but on Wednesday, it felt like the first time I’d driven this route in years. Just as I had discovered on my trip to Redwood City two weeks earlier, the familiar seemed shinily new and the mundane seemed magical. When I began to cross the bridge and looked to my right at the blue-brown-green expanse of San Pablo Bay and the green hills of Marin ahead, I almost jumped out of the car with excitement. The ride through Marin to Stinson Beach was even more exhilarating. Massive deep green trees shaded the winding roadway, red-tailed hawks surfed the air currents above, and bright purple, orange, and golden wildflowers bloomed by the side of the road. At a certain point on Highway 1, I crested a ridge—and the vast Pacific spread away on my left, limitless and glinting. I almost drove off the road exulting at the sight. After another 20 minutes of winding, up-and-down coast- hugging, a new chapter in the pilgrimage began. A few miles from Stinson Beach, I began to see cars parked in the pull-offs on the side of the highway. As I got closer, the pull-offs were more and more packed. This didn’t bode well, but I decided to drive all the way to the town to see what the situation was. I drove through town, past the fire department and the

bookstore and the two roadside restaurants, and reached the market where I usually stop for supplies. The main parking lot entrance for the beach is opposite this market, and a metal barrier had been swung across the entranceway, blocking it, and displaying signs saying the lot was closed. Exploring the surrounding streets, I discovered that many were closed off with orange cones and “Access to residents only” signs, and that on the non-closed thoroughfares, every inch of parking space was occupied. So I drove a mile and a half back down the highway until I found a suitable pull-off and parked. At first, this seemed a huge inconvenience, but as I was making the 30-minute walk, I realized that all the great pilgrimages involve walking: the Camino de Santiago, Mount Kailash, the Shikoku 88-temple route. Clearly, this was an essential step in the 2020 pilgrimage to Stinson Beach. From a section of the highway that overlooked the beach, I could see perhaps 200 people scattered along the mile-long stretch of sand. When I reached the road that leads to the parking lot, I began to encounter groups of people. Very few were wearing masks, but for the most part, each individual group—family, friends, or both—seemed to be keeping a responsible social distance from each other. Feeling a familiar frisson, I carried on past the people, through the parking lot to the southern end of the beach, and then over a couple of gentle ridges. I ascended the last ridge and—bam! There it was, my sacred spot: a half-moon-shaped swatch of sand framed by huge boulders, with a few rocks suitable for sitting located just beyond the high tide line. I went to the rock where I always sit, set my backpack down, took off my sandals, wiggled my toes in the luxurious sand, and settled in with a from-the-bottom-of-my-soul sigh. Time seemed to slow down, and I took a few deep breaths and just focused. Before me stretched a pure and purely

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