Big Sur — The End of the Road

There's a place on Highway 1 where the land simply stops. You come around a curve and the whole Pacific is just there, all of it, gold and impossible, and there's nowhere left to drive. End of the road. End of the continent. I mean, technically it keeps going, but why would anyone want to, ya know?

We pulled over on a cliff and got out and didn't say anything for a while. Ethan packed four jackets for this trip and gave me grief the whole first day about how I'd never need the spare. I'm wearing the spare right now, for the record, because the wind comes in cold off the water and he runs warm and I run cold and that, somehow, is exactly how we fit.

I'll tell you where I was two years ago, though I think you already know if you've been following along. I was somebody who had decided the safest thing in the world was to stop wanting anything at all. Then a loud, soft-hearted kid from Vermont broke into my life and refused to leave, and I spent a whole year terrified of how much I loved him, and now here we are at the edge of the country with salt in the air and nowhere else to drive.

I asked Ethan what we do now that the road's run out.

He grinned and said, "We turn around and do it backwards."

So we will. Whatever the road turns out to be, I'm doing it with him.

Thanks for following along, everybody. This isn't the end of anything. It's just the first trip.

— J

P.S. — Ethan would like it noted that the snow globe survived all three thousand miles. It is going on the shelf. We have a shelf now.