Traveling to a Place Out of Time, Out of Mind

On Saturday, we got out of town. It was a trip that had been planned for months, a trip that teetered in the days following Sept. 11, when the universe pitched and shuddered, took a deep breath, steadied itself. Like many things, a weekend getaway seemed suddenly frivolous. But we had already told the kids, and while Fiona might not have noticed a cancellation, Danny Mac and his best friend Bailey certainly would have. The definition of “commitment” is difficult to understand until you have promised two 31/2-year-olds a trip to a “ho-teal.” And watching silently as my son built a Lego replica of the twin towers and circled it with his firefighter doll, calling for everyone to get out before it fell, I knew we had to get out of town.

Under the best of circumstances, it is not easy to get a road trip that involves six adults and three children moving. We had three cars, two departure times and way too many cell phone numbers, but as soon we as got on the 2 out of Glendale, as soon as the L.A. skyline was behind us, I felt better. Until we turned on the radio. The culprit wasn’t NPR, but the traffic report. We were headed up the coast from Glendale to Cayucos, and three minutes out of the driveway, the 101 was backed up from Calabasas to Reseda. “It’ll have cleared by the time we get there,” I said. My husband rolled his eyes.

I reached for the Thomas Bros., and 20 minutes later we were all traveling west on the 118, the Ronald Reagan Freeway, up to our ears in California.

Living in L.A. it is far too easy to forget what California looks like. Even the California in our own backyards. As several hundred thousand residents of the San Fernando Valley will tell you, most of it does not even remotely resemble Hollywood or Hancock Park or Santa Monica. North of Granada Hills, of Chatsworth, the landscape arches into hills worn dry and brown by summer, bucks with the golden violence of sandstone slabs heaved up and out thousands of years ago. Passing the sign for Simi Valley, decorated by several large flags, the road curved, and for a moment the entire town was visible--a white and terra-cotta platter surrounded by plates of houses stacked neatly against hills that surrounded it like Saharan dunes, stretching on forever.

At Moorpark, the freeway portion of the 118 ends. It dropped us off with a bump in a commercial stretch that, save for the teenaged car washes for the Red Cross and the firefighters waving motorists toward a safety fund-raiser, could have be anywhere, any time. But past the Taco Bells and video stores, the road grows leaner, finds the horse farms, the nurseries, the improbable swaths of sudden green, the endless bonneted rows of vines--beans, maybe, or peas. The road here follows the train tracks and the smoky blue California sky, a reminder that, as unlikely as it seems given climate and geography, California is farm country.

We followed 118 to 34 south, which connects to 101, and continued northwest. Past Santa Barbara, stands of California oak spilled down the tawny hills, and the road was often in shadow. The earth to the east sometimes gave way to sand and cliff, but to the west the hills rolled on and on. Like the black mirrors used by artists, the gorgeous monotony of the hills refreshed the eyes, eased the heart. In Cayucos, the ocean was cold and Caribbean blue, and the motel fit all the kids’ requirements. We heard the call of the elephant seals and marveled at the obsessive beauty of San Simeon. For someone raised amid the verdant hills of Maryland, the beauty of the Central Coast took some getting used to. It is stark and offers not so much comfort as purity, a slate pounded smooth, bleached clean by water and sun and wind. Exactly, we all agreed, what we needed.

We didn’t forget what happened two weeks ago; we remembered why it matters so much.