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Traffic & Tides

Photo by Marc Cooper– Flickr, Leo Carrillo Beach, CA

Where would I live, out of a million possibilities?

As a lifelong wanderer, I’d like to go home. We can’t go home they say. They’re wrong.

But my home is not a house, a street, or even a town. My home is on the edges of the ever-changing ocean. It sits on the side of the continent where the sun sets over the waters. I grew up watching that sun. Sometimes the sun disappeared behind the waves in brilliant oranges and reds, while at other times it glowed like an ember buried in ashes as the world rolled away towards night and the fog rolled in.

I’ve been wandering since 1983. I went back to visit the last time in 2014. They were most definitely wrong about not being able to go home again. I was home. The nightmarish traffic, the chaotic interchanges, the canyon roads, and then finally, the sea; it all felt as if I had never left. The home I grew up in was there. It had changed but somehow it was still the same. I did look around in amazement once there because I was surprised that there were so many trees. Many of the places where I had spent my youth were different, but after one wanders for decades that’s what you can expect to see. If it hadn’t changed that would have been too strange.

The ocean never changes. The beaches may come and go, the sand shifts underfoot while you stand in it after all, but the ocean still thunders. The salt spray still glazes your skin and hair while you make your way around the seaweed the waves gifted the shore for the day. Even if I were to be deaf and blind I would know that realm. That is where I am meant to be. The Western edge of North America, anywhere from Cabo San Lucas on the Baja peninsula in Mexico, and all the way up to Juneau Alaska would serve as home. The closest I’ve found in my wanderings abroad was Noordwijk Ann Zee in the Netherlands. But I have yet to see Portugal, Spain, or Italy, so who knows maybe any western edge along the oceans would feel like home as well.

But even then, those far shores don’t have the awful traffic of Los Angeles. And oddly enough, I feel at home in traffic. Someday I hope to return home to stay. For now though, the universe set me down near water – an acequia – on a street that carries the same name as a famous one I used to travel in West Hollywood. I guess that was the best available at the time and I will take it until I move once again.

5 responses to “Traffic & Tides”

  1. Bob Lynn Avatar
    Bob Lynn

    There’s such a quiet, tidal confidence in the way you talk about home here. The piece reads less like a travelogue and more like someone listening for a coastline inside their own chest, then recognising it when the air smells of salt and exhaust fumes.

    The way you hold the contradiction of “nightmarish traffic” and deep belonging feels oddly comforting. Most people romanticise the sea but edit out the freeways and chaotic interchanges; you fold them in, almost like essential supporting characters. It makes sense, really. For some of us, the sound of tyres on tarmac is as evocative as waves on shingle. Both are a kind of endless, strangely soothing movement.

    The observation that it would be stranger if nothing had changed also lands beautifully. There’s a mature kind of grief in that line – a willingness to let the younger self stay in the past, while still visiting the places that shaped them. Your acceptance that the trees have multiplied and the hangouts have shifted feels like a small act of grace towards time

    The ocean itself, in your telling, has that archetypal quality of a parent who has aged but not fundamentally altered: still thundering, still throwing seaweed at your feet like offerings, uninterested in your decades of wandering yet entirely available the moment you return. That image of knowing the realm even without sight or sound was especially striking.

    Also, the note about Noordwijk aan Zee, and your hunch that any western edge might feel like kin, suggests home for you is less a postcode and more a compass direction: west plus water plus movement. Even your current place, with the acequia and the borrowed street name, reads like the universe leaving a forwarding address.

    Thanks for sharing this. It makes returning – in whatever form – feel less like failure and more like good navigation.

    Reply
    1. S.Bechtold Avatar
      S.Bechtold

      Thank you for this insightful reply. Yes that’s exactly it, the traffic is essential. Home is a place of opposites. Nostalgia would only focus on my favorite parts. But much more happened that nostalgia doesn’t cover and those things made a place my home. It wasn’t a beach without a sunburn. Sand gets everywhere and it’s supposed to. It was where I learned that nature has to be worked with, she will not be pushed around. If I wanted sunshine instead of fog, the lesson was try again tomorrow because nothing lasts forever. The scent of seaweed in the hot sun, tanning oil, car exhaust, salt spray, hot asphalt, and the burger joint at County Line beach (Neptune’s Net) will always be a specific place and time but not the definition of home.

      Reply
  2. Elle Starling Avatar
    Elle Starling

    Los Angeles is the place that’s always felt the most like home for me, I understand what you mean about the traffic too – I find myself driving down memory lane of the 405, especially when I’m Homesick for the Holidays. . . I like that you connect where you are now to where you’ve been, and long to be, by the street name you’ve found yourself on for now; I always appreciate finding those little Easter Eggs from the Universe too.

    Reply
    1. S.Bechtold Avatar
      S.Bechtold

      Ooo! The 405 is definitely memorable. I spent most of my time on the 101 or on 1 along the beaches. The Easter Eggs are what keep me going. I didn’t have much choice when I rented this place. I was running out of time and the pandemic was shutting everything down. I felt like I was in the The Langoliers and trying to stay ahead of the empty blackness rolling in behind us as we drove across the country. But we made it as you can see. I didn’t notice the Easter Eggs for at least a year. February is when I get homesick. We used to ditch school every spring when it warmed up and go to the beach. My friends surfed and there were still good waves from winter storms coming in before they flattened out by summer. Wetsuits were required because that water was cold!

      Reply
      1. Elle Starling Avatar
        Elle Starling

        Ha, that made me think of the times me & my college bestie would ditch our shared class, to go study at the beach 😂 I’m not sure the logic was there, but the beach was still a great backdrop lol. I never did gain the skill to surf, I can imagine how freeing it is tho. Sigh, the Beach in the Winter is one of my favorite places to be.
        It seems the Pandemic worked hard to push ppl into spaces they may never have chosen otherwise, we went thru a similar experience and wound up somewhere we never would have otherwise; maybe the lesson is simply to grow where we’re planted and make the best out of it, whatever that may mean 🤔.

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