“Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien”-John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” 11-14.
Route 1 along the Pacific Ocean hearkens back to the vestiges of adventurers and madmen that dared to explore beyond what was known to European, African and Asiatic nation-states. It’s not that Columbus or Spanish Conquistadors discovered the pastoral wonder and ironic, arid practicality of the soil along the Pacific coast, but you can’t help but wonder about an omnipotent being where there is so much beauty and power stemming from a landmass nestled behind various precipices and bluffs buttressing the Sea. The adventurers stared into the abyss of the unknown, and set sail.
It’s like Dr. T.J Eckleburg is peaking at you from beyond the horizon as you make your way through the cavernous mountains, sprawling farms and apathetic livestock of San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Carmel, Monterrey and Big Sur. It’s a place that is both contemporary and antiquated; the land appears untrammeled by the humanity that’s forsaken Mother Earth during its manifest destiny, but also resigned to our presence with concrete hugging the cliffs.
Prehistoric Pangaea curves outlining the coast where a lone roadway now rests remind us of our insignificance as a species, while also stridently fighting to matter. Some probably view Route 1 as simply a road to traverse on their way to some destination, but when Apollonian horses gallop towards the rim of our ken, we can exhale and breath in our existence commingled with the sea air.
