Wishing to take a momentary break from the warmth of late summer here in Modesto, my wife and I recently traveled on a short vacation to one of our classic getaways – Mendocino, a small town tucked away far up the northern California coast. The wild coastline, highly weather-eroded and scoured by the Pacific Ocean’s powerful, jet-like currents, has steep cliffs and very jagged rocks that lean precariously over the edge of space, each like a diver preparing to plunge into the depths below. The whole scene never fails to amaze.
This sense of amazement is arresting. Indeed, once we had arrived in our modest studio and looked out of our window, we decided that dinner could wait. Everything could wait. Yes, travel can be very purposeful and time-intensive. Yet here, now, by that window, there was a magical sense of nowhere to go, nothing to do, and we found ourselves quite content to simply relax into receptivity, lulled into a kind of reverie, listening to the rolling surf below, observing seabirds swooping and swirling as the sun slowly sank into darkness.
Yet this sense of amazement is not tethered to the ocean. One need not travel far. At moments, I have found it (or rather, it has found me) in momentary pauses while on a walk through Modesto’s Dry Creek, or when watering the camelia shrubs in our side yard. Truly, this sense of time standing still –nowhere to go, nothing to do – can be accessed anywhere, anytime. All we need do is open to it…