The Way of Wanderlust (12 page)

As the sky brightened, I worried that I was too late. But I had forgotten that Machu Picchu, despite its high altitude, is still a bowl surrounded by towering peaks. I raced up to the site and saw with relief that while the peaks to the west were tipped with bright sunlight, the ruins were still in shade. I made my way directly to the sundial, known as Intihuatana or “hitching post of the sun,” which sits atop a pyramid-like construct of terrace and wall in the site's northwest quadrant.

I positioned myself at the sundial and waited, absorbing the stony stillness and the fresh scent of grass, the texture of tree. I watched the sun's rays light the peaks behind and around me, slowly getting higher and higher, closer and closer.

Minutes passed. The molecules in the air ever so slightly brightened. Then, in a suspended moment, light flared over the top of the mountain directly in front and touched the sundial.

I was looking through the lens of my camcorder when it happened, and at the moment the sun appeared, rays shot out in six searing streaks at forty-five-degree angles. I felt like one streak was searing through me as well. I felt transfixed, transformed. For a suspended moment I felt drawn into the sun, enwrapped by the sun, plucked into some profound energy-stream of sun worship that coursed through the ground where I stood. This flowing energy seemed to stitch through me and through the world around me—the sundial, the rock plazas, doorways, and walls, the temples and the terraces. For a moment I felt a thoughtless understanding, a pure, empty-headed universe-connection, a solar spear-tip that pierced my heart and soul.

Then it was gone. A group of gossiping students clambered over the rocks, guides replayed their learned lectures, camera-wielding couples postured and posed. But somehow, everything had been transformed.

In retrospect, all I can say is that some deep energy radiates from that place. It's a combination of the altitude, the pristine quality of the ruins themselves, the purity of the air and the sky and the sun—and something else too, a kind of spiritual energy that courses like water-springs through the site. I had felt it on the Sacred Plaza and by the Temple of the Sun, but I felt it especially at Intihuatana at dawn: the hitching post of the sun.

At mid-morning, Manuel joined me and we took a walk along the Inca Trail. Most trekkers take the trail from Ollantaytambo or from an intermediate stop called Kilometer 104 along the rail line to Aguas Calientes, but Manuel and I met at the Watchman's Hut and walked up the trail in the opposite direction, away from the ruins and toward the Sun Gate, or Intipunku, where trekkers first see Machu Picchu. We shared the paved path with orchids and llamas and workers who were trying to repair one section of the trail that had been weakened during the rains. Looking into the jungle to the right of the trail we could see more Inca walls in the thick shade. Manuel said there were probably Inca walls scattered throughout the mountains. The dense slopes seemed alive with them, echoing with the spirit of the people who tilled, ate, and slept, planted, played, and prayed here 500 years before.

We reached Intipunku and then continued along the Inca Trail away from the site. We descended into a world of luxurious blossoms and thick cloud forest shadows. I remarked to Manuel that I was amazed by how well the path was paved, and he told me that at its height, the Inca empire had been laced by a network of 19,000 miles of trails, virtually all paved. I stopped and touched my hand to the rough stone and tried to conjure the imagination and organization, technology and toil, required to complete such a feat. I tried to picture the worker who had placed the very stone on which I stood, whose fingers had touched the very pocks and ridges my fingertips traced. What did he eat? Where did he sleep? What did he dream?

We walked for a half hour to a point where we could see another ruin on a mountain slope: Winay Wayna, a cleared site most trekkers detour to explore. I thought of the deep-shaded walls we'd passed before—who knew what secret cities these vast jungles still held?

The trails wound on and on, I realized, some into the cloud forest fastnesses, some into the secret cities of the soul. Then I thought back to that dawn moment when some inexplicable energy had stitched the sun to all—and on that lonely, well-trod mountain trail, I finally felt whole.

Stinson Beach, in Northern California's Marin County, is the natural equivalent of Ryoanji or Notre-Dame for me. I first discovered it in the late 1980s during my ramblings as the
Examiner
's Travel Editor. Something about the place touched me deeply and immediately, and it quickly became a place where I would go at the beginning of each year for a kind of gathering and grounding of myself. Over the years, these journeys expanded to other seasons as well, and this piece describes a pilgrimage in the summer of 2011, when much had changed in my life from those first visits two decades before. I wrote this essay for Gadling. As with so many of the stories in this book, writing for an understanding editor—that is, me—allowed me to write exactly the way I wanted, infusing these reflections and questions, this attempt to make sense of things, with what I hope is a poignant poetry.

JULY 20, 2011; 11:30 A.M.
—I'm sitting at the southern tip of Stinson Beach, a glorious mile-long stretch of sand that borders the unincorporated, population 650 hamlet of the same name in Marin County, Northern California.

Stinson Beach is a ragged, flip-flops, bikinis, and board shorts kind of town, and whether you're a Bay Area visitor or resident, it's a terrific place to stop. A couple of inviting restaurants face each other across the sole street—famed Highway 1—that runs through town; both have sun-umbrella'd patios that are intimations of heaven on a balmy, blue-sky day like today. There are arts and crafts galleries, a quintessential little-bit-of-everything market, B&Bs, and a beguiling bookstore with a compact, ecumenical, and eminently Marin mix of books ranging from Zen treatises and Native American history and culture to mainstream mysteries and fiction, and a proud selection of work by local authors.

I love these riches, but they're not why I come here. Stinson Beach is about an hour's winding drive from my house, so it's not exactly an on-a-whim destination for me; rather it's a touchstone place where I come to gather myself. And today I need gathering.

So here I am, ensconced on a rock beyond an outcrop of massive boulders that separates this thin slice of sand from the main beach, where a couple hundred people are blissfully surfing, strolling, and sunbathing.

I've been in this spot for twenty minutes and I haven't seen anyone—except a teenaged couple who appeared holding hands literally just as I wrote “I haven't seen anyone” and jumped when they saw me and now have abruptly turned back—and I like it that way.

In the 1980s and '90s, when I was the Travel Editor at the San Francisco newspaper, I used to make a pilgrimage here every spring to write a column. This was the place where I gathered my thoughts, looked back on the triumphs and failures of the year past and ahead to the new year's goals and dreams.

It's still a good place to take stock of things. The simplicity of the scene strips away the veneers of life, reduces the distracting complexities. Sea. Rocks. Sand. Sun. That's it. The spareness helps me—makes me—slow down and pay attention.

The roar and swash of the waves echo in my ears, the salty sea-smell fills my nose, the sun warms like a hot compress on my shoulders, my toes wiggle into the wet cool sand. The water white-froths in, spreads into rippling fans over the sand, then rushes back. Again. And again.

A seagull web-walks through the waves, leaps onto a rock, scans the water for food. It prances with oddly brittle legs along the sand, flaps to the top of a rock, and imperiously surveys the waves.

A slick six-foot seaweed pod washes onto the beach. A tiny insect scurries over my keyboard, a neon-green bug lands briefly on my screen.

I let the sea wash over me, let the waves fill my head and lungs, lose myself to this inconceivably old and ageless place.

I think: This is the same scene I witnessed two decades ago, quite possibly even the same rock I sat on then, scribbling in my journal as I tap into my laptop now. And if I come back in twenty years, it will almost certainly be the same still.

But of course, much has changed in those two decades. My children have grown up and moved on. My dad and other loved ones have passed away. New jobs, new places, new books, old dreams.

And suddenly these words flow into my brain: Where does it all come together? What does it mean?

The sea swashing ceaselessly scrubs the mind clean.

I palm the rough, sandy surface of the boulder to my left, warmed by the sun, cradling sand in its pocks and green ridges of moss in its cracks, etched by wind, wave, and rain.

Wisps like smoke from a seaborne fire drift around me, and on the horizon a bank of gray-blue fog gathers, curling at the top so that it looks like a frozen tidal wave. I think of the tsunami in Sendai, where my daughter traveled recently and saw the destruction with her own eyes, where the local man who was guiding her broke down and cried. All those uprooted lives
. . .
.

Where does it come together? What does it mean?

The waves push glinting pebbles onto the shore, fan, recede. The seagull flaps away, unsatisfied, searching. Life is precarious, uncertain, brief. There is a precious precariousness at the heart of all things.

The sea swashing ceaselessly scrubs the mind clean.

The waves roar-splash in, getting a little closer now. The tide is coming in; the blue pebble we inhabit is turning in the celestial sea.

Where does it come together? What does it mean?

Focus. Enjoy the moment while you have it. Enjoy your loved ones while you have them. Recognize the gifts the world gives you: Inhale the sea, sink your toes into the sand, let the ocean-roar silence your mind.

Then take this simple scene home with you: Sun. Sand. Rocks. Sea.

The sea swashing ceaselessly scrubs the mind clean.

What it all comes down to, I think, is the relationships you forge, the experiences you embrace, the lessons you bestow, the bridges you make, the ideals you seed, the love you live and leave.

Dedicate yourself to creating something of value with your days. Something that will last.

The sea swashing ceaselessly scrubs the mind clean.

Where does it come together? What does it mean?

Sun. Sand. Rocks. Sea. A Stinson Beach clarity.