In the 18^th century, the Swiss author Madame de Stael remarked, “Travel is one of the saddest pleasures in life.”  That idea runs through my mind as I continue to travel alone up Highway 1.  Solo travel makes me melancholy, but in a way that is pleasurable, in the way that a good cry feels therapeutic.  I feel alone, but not lonely.  I feel much lonelier in a crowd of people than when I am driving my car down a long deserted stretch of road.

I drive out of Morro Bay, the mammoth Rock sharply illuminated in the cool morning sun, very different from the darkly brooding monolith it was last night silhouetted against the sunset.

Herds of black cows graze and sleep on easily sloping pastures as I come to the sign for “Harmony, Population 18.”  I wonder if this is an omen.  After all, I am looking for something akin to harmony on this trip.  I consider stopping.  But then the artist colony “town” appears, and the brightly painted houses with overfilled flowerboxes and scripted slates announcing “Arts & Crafts” and “Gallerie” glare at me with tourist-trap intentions.  As I pass, I see seven or eight people lined up along the town road, plein-air painting the same landscape, and I push the accelerator to the floor.  The Indigo Girls are belting out in my car and I’m not ready to stop, especially for that.

I feel a sense of isolation from my normal life when I travel alone.  There is no one to think about, no one to ask if they are having a good time, no one to call.  It feels like a luxury, this time when I can be selfish without feeling guilty.  My world is reduced to a small bubble of just me.

As I sit in a café in the small town of Cambria, I feel a sense of rest, of calm.  I don’t belong here, and that feeling of rest would dissipate quickly if I were to stay, but here in this moment, it is perfect as it is.  Fleeting and perfect.

After breakfast, I drive north, rising out of Cambria, towards the main event of the Pacific Coast highway drive, the coastline of Big Sur.  The drama of Big Sur starts building at Ragged Point, one of the last stops for food and services on the largely undeveloped coastal road.   In my opinion, North to South is the best way to drive Big Sur, because the experience ratchets up in intensity as you go.  The most dramatic landscapes reveal themselves in the northern half, so as you drive from the south, each succeeding vista gets more impressive.  Pull into the turn outs frequently.  This is no place to rush.

The two lane road tightly hugs the edge of the cliffs and winds back and forth in some places so intricately that the speed limit is 20 mph.  The surf pounds powerfully against the rocks, churning angrily into a white froth, far below my car.  The edges of the road curve perilously close to the edge.  Rocky cliffs rise above the road as well as plunge toward the sea.  Until the 1920’s, this area remained largely inaccessible, and it is in those harrowing turns that I understand why.

Two wheeled visitors are everywhere, from bicyclists along the southern stretch, to bikers in phalanxes of Harley’s respectfully passing through.

In 1962, Monterey County won a landmark land use case, and banned any new construction visible from Highway 1.  That means that the vast majority of the road is unspoiled.  Visible buildings are few and few between, billboards are banned

Along with the Napali Coast of Kauai, these are some of the most magnificent coastal cliffs in the US, and in the world.  And on PCH, you can drive them instead of being forced to hike into them or take a boat.

If you do want to hike, Pfeiffer Falls is a popular walk for all abilities that goes through the giant redwoods and to a rocky waterfall.  The Ewoldsen Trail is more challenging, but you get everything – rocky streams, redwoods, and ocean vistas.

By the time I get to the Northern stretch of Big Sur, I understand why Esalen (and other spiritual centers and seekers) settled here.  The landscape becomes spiritual itself after a few miles, settling into you.  The bohemian spirit of the 50s and 60s left their mark, not only physically but on the mythology of Big Sur with icons like Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson adding to the Big Sur canon.  As Highway 1 twists and weaves into the redwoods, I think about my last trip here.

The cord connecting my current self to my 21 year old self as he searched for himself on this same road becomes more tangible with each mile, a line pulling taut behind me as the road unspools into my rear view mirror.  As I’ve gotten older, I wonder sometimes how much of the purity remains of that young kid in college.  It was so easy to allow joy into my life at that time.  It was also easy to slip into angst at that age of course, but at the time, all I could think about was the creative fulfilled life I wanted to create for myself.  Life seemed challenging, but not so complicated.  I was more pure at that age, not bruised by bad relationships, or good relationships that ended, not hindered by the discovery of my own failings and shortcomings over the years, the little and the big pains and fear and mistakes that calcified around my personal history.

But on the road, I feel closer to that college kid.  Closer than I’ve felt in a long time.  There is a cord connecting him and I.  I’m not him, but there are big parts of him that still live inside me.  And I’d lost touch with those parts.  I still have many of the same fears about my life, and about myself.  I still have most of the same dreams.

I’m sad when I realize how disconnected I have been from that kid, because he contains a lot of the things I love about myself.  My ex-partner didn’t get a lot of that kid in the last 18 months.  He got a lot of the stressed out, ADD Tom, when I was unsure where I was going next but also unclear how to ask myself the right questions to get back on track.  That is something that I will always regret, that my partner didn’t meet more of that kid in me.  I think he would have liked him.

I eat lunch at Nepenthe, the famous 2 story restaurant complex perched on the edge of the cliffs near Esalen.  The complex is swathed in hippie and Hollywood mythology, from the origin stories to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton filming there, to Henry Miller living on the top floor.  It reminds me of an amusement park homage to hippie home design, and the food is priced for tourists, but the views are stunning.

The Bixby Bridge is one of the last photo opps as I head towards the Monterey Peninsula – the 700 foot high single span concrete bridge and the towering cliffs are one of the most iconic images of the Big Sur Coastline.

I’m thankful as the Highway 1 settles from the frenetic cliffside twists into a long straight shot into Carmel, the posh seaside community where I see luxury cars for the first time since LA.  Tacky art that my parents would buy (sorry Mom) sells here at exorbitant prices.  (Thomas Kinkade, the painter of light, you know who you are.)  I pull into a bed and breakfast for the night and though the road has stopped unfurling behind me for the night, my thoughts rush forward.

This road trip is connected to my early self in another way.  This road trip will end in San Francisco, where I am staying for a couple of days with my first love.  This was the first man to whom I ever said I love you.  We were so painfully young – I was 24, he was 22.  I’ve seen him a few times over the past 15 years, but only for brief moments.  For a few years, we were gently angry at each other, not for anything in particular, but because we needed an inchoate anger to put up a defensive wall between us until the hurt had subsided to a manageable level.  Then we settled in different cities and drifted into new lives.

If anyone knows the kid from that earlier period, it is him.  He hasn’t been around to watch the layers of time and history accrete.  Maybe this trip down Highway 1 is a journey to find that kid again.  And maybe seeing him is a part of that journey.