December daily: Beautiful place

[resonant]

krait prompts: What's the most beautiful place you've ever been?

I wish I'd traveled more, honestly. But I love Point Reyes National Seashore, in northern California, where there are cliffs out over the Pacific Ocean in the fog, tidepools with giant puffy starfish and the occasional little tiny octopus, and gratings built into some of the roads to stop the sheep from getting out the way the cars get in.

I used to live in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I love them, too, but because I lived there my memory is less postcard-like (compared to my memory of Point Reyes) and more multisensory. I love the faintly acidic smell of a whole lot of rhododendrons and pine trees in a small space, and the way streams hiss running over wide flat rocks, and the hummingbirds that came and perched on my clothesline and were about the size of clothespins, and the taste of the water sweet from the tap and so cold that sometimes in summer it fogged up the chrome of the faucet.

Comments

[jedusaur]

I grew up in northern CA, and we went to Point Reyes a couple times. I don't remember much, but I remember the sheep grates and tidepools, and I remember loving it.

[resonant]

We walked and walked and walked. I remember one stone farmhouse surrounded by trees in that twisted shape that you only get by the ocean, all dark against the fog, and I wondered whether if I lived in a place like that I would long for the sun, or whether I would always love the coolness the way I did just then.

[riverlight]

I adore Pt. Reyes! Such an amazing landscape. For me as a New England girl, living in California for a few years was a revelation; everything was foreign. The shape of the hills, the sere gold color everything turned in autumn, the vegetation—it was all new and so beautiful!

And your description of Appalachia is so gorgeous. :)

[resonant]

the sere gold color everything turned in autumn

I've seen it! The hills look like lions' backs! Also, once we were walking (not up in the high hills, just higher up in the suburb the spouse grew up in) and the sun came out behind us and cast our shadows on a bank of heavy fog in front of us, and I thought I saw the source of legendary monsters.

[riverlight]

Oh, eerie! Yeah, the landscape can be downright alien to my non-Californian eyes!

[metaphortunate]

Point Reyes is genuinely beautiful!

[resonant]

I'd love to go back, maybe at a time of year when the nights weren't so long.

One thing that I didn't expect was that the drive from the suburbs to Point Reyes would be so long and nerve-wracking!

[rhi]

Oh, man. I still remember driving the Blue Ridge Parkway with Dragon one April and watching fog pouring up the mountain. It came up over the tress, then shredded on the trees, until tatters of the stuff started filling the gap made by the road from sky to ground. Watching that was just amazing.

[resonant]

Wow. I've never seen anything like that. It sounds so amazing!

I remember looking up in the spring when the new leaves were making a pale-green haze over the hillside and saying, "Would you look at the color of that mountain!" and my mountain-born co-worker said, "But it's just ordinary mountain color."

[krait]

Belated reply, because somehow I missed it!

What lovely descriptions; thank you! I've never been to Point Reyes, but it sounds like it needs to go on The List. :D

[resonant]

I really recommend it if you like cool and foggy places.