To the lighthouse

Adam and I went to Point Reyes yesterday as a sort of get out of town excursion. We drove up the TT, and it was a fun, beautiful drive. It was cool at the coast (which was part of our reason for going) and the very tip of the point was shrouded in fog and below 60 degrees. I was really moved by the strange, desolate beauty of the windswept headlands, the plump succulency of ice plant, the brightness of the red alga. The wind-carved swirls of sedimentary rock within which pebbles and stones were trapped. The lighthouse itself was less interesting, and certainly not worth the 300-step climb down and back. Not that you shouldn't hike down to the lighthouse, but the journey itself is the point. The vertigo, the precariousness, the waves crashing on the rocks below, and the gentle boom of the foghorn. It's an amazing place, and the view is spectacular. As we were leaving, with wobbling legs and labored breathing, a flight of seven pelicans, larger than you think, circled the point.