I want to see the ocean at sunrise. The cloak of care for an elderly aunt has passed to me, and there’s much to do, but I start each day by walking. Far from home, I search the map for a green patch touching blue: The Ellwood Mesa Reserve in Goleta where it grazes the Pacific. My phone guides me as sunlight begins to stretch to the western horizon.
Parked among sleeping houses at the dead end of a street, I step through a chain-link fence onto a worn path, and scan ahead and to both sides. The way leads down between gray-green tangles of eucalyptus. Their stinging pungency reminds me of a hillside long ago but not far away, behind my grandmother’s house on Deerpath Road.
When I lived in Manhattan and found myself looking down a vacant street, I would turn away from the danger its emptiness implied, from being caught alone. I consider this now as I notice clearings in the brush on either side. Someone could be waking up, just out of sight. Someone not so much waiting as ready. Someone who read the same stories growing up, but as hunter instead of hunted. I wonder if I’ll need to run or shout, though the nearest houses are farther than a yell away. The path slopes gently upward and out of sight.
You never know what’s beyond a hill until you reach its crest or around a corner until you turn it. I urge myself up and over the ridge. To the edge of a deserted and sparsely treed cliff. Below, the sea is rolling onto the shaded shore, and dawn is glinting on distant waves. A sign says this is a plover nesting site. Nothing rustles in the grass.
The beach beckons me with a salty breeze. A steep trail leads down and bends out of sight. Another path invites me to walk the ridge along the bluff. But I’ve reached the end of brave, and I am already tired from mistaking myself for prey.
As I walk back, a woman runs past me with her dog, and I notice my tension as it slips away. This is a place where a woman can go if she’s running. Perhaps best accompanied by a dog. She’s almost a companion as she runs along the cliff and out of sight. I think to follow her but retrace my steps instead.
Next time I’ll come with a friend, and we can wait in the grass for plover.
