CHASING BLISS | by david huebner

We pull off the highway at a dirt road heading toward the Pacific Coast.  Twisting open a couple Tecate balleñas, we look at a dying thunderstorm caught over a mountain range brilliantly sharp against the flatness of the desert.  Watching through the insect graveyard of our windshield, the scene shimmers in dusty shades of orange and grey.  There probably won't be any surf, we tell each other, but it should be a cool place to check out.  There's been no swell besides the devastating hurricane that tore the highway apart, and there's nothing in the forecast—we are simply exploring.  The cold beer tastes like a mirage as my foot releases the brake and down the washboard we go.

            The ocotillo are blooming, and we cross washes cracked with drying mud.  Distant mesas, peaks, random roads heading straight for nowhere.  It's beautiful.  We see glimmers of the Pacific, were those waves?  A dusty fishing village greets us at the end of the road, near the tip of a point, and we do a lap of the main drag before pulling up next to the beach and a line-up of fishing boats.  Pointing to some white water outside, I ask Mariah, "You think that's the break there?"  Some sort of a wave had just happened.  "I guess, pretty minimal."  "Yeah, wonder where we should camp?"

—— I blink my eyes, my glasses are fogging against the cold air and my warm breath—a grey storm blows around me, drowning the forest.  The snow is heavy against my knees and I break trail slowly up the mountainside.  This is about the wettest snow you can get and still call it snow, how the hell will I ski down?  I stop for breath, and catch sight of a single red-tailed hawk silently lifting from a tree-top, soaring without moving it's wings, just drifting with the breeze.  It's watching the ground with quick concerned glances, eyes darting around in its head—much like you might watch a wave, trying just to feel the curl but occasionally needing a quick look ——

A brown Ford van pulls up next to us.  A middle-aged man with a big smile pops out from behind the sliding door, a blond woman in sunglasses about the same age sits in the passenger seat, arm draped out the window, and they're driven by a bearded, ratty fellow smiling cooly through a Tecate.  "Hey, so where do you camp around here?" I ask.  The guy behind the sliding door is the first to respond, "Well anywhere pretty much, I'm Norm by the way," and we shake hands, "but there's good spots back down the road, you should come and camp with us, man, we're over at this point, there's just a few of us, and the waves are perfect—small, you know, but long—I mean I'm sore from surfing so much, the offshores kick up every afternoon."  He can tell we are eating these words like so much ice cream—the passion of good waves evident in our rapt silence.

            He gives us basic directions, "Go along the coast here, past that point there, that's the main break, whatever, they can have it, we sat there for a few days and there was nothing, but you keep going, and you'll see our camp, big truck, camper, green tarp setup, it's a big camp, right on the point.  Alright, ok, we'll see you there."

            We add a few extra turns to the route, but we make it, and sure enough, I can barely set the parking brake before we jump out of the car to stand, drooling, at offshore-groomed perfect waist high sets peeling for over a hundred yards off the point in front of us.  The wind is driving spray into rainbows of late afternoon light.  Boards are unstrapped, rash gaurds wriggled into, and we tumble into the water, paddling out like kids in a candy store.

—— This is it, I give up, I even write it in the snow with my ski pole, I GIVE UP!!  I'm turning around here.  Skiing down is like water skiing, keep your speed and you do great, start to slow down and you sink.  I hop back into my up-track whenever I need more speed, like a slow section of a wave, I see another opportunity for some turns and charge a couple dripping wet trenches into the slope, barely making it back into the uptrack before the slop can drown me.  Oh good, there's the cabin, a few last turns.  Mariah laughs, "Back already?"  I tell her how wet and deep the new stuff is out there.  I head for the bathroom, where our oil heater sits within inches of the toilet.  A collage of surf photos adorn the wall.  The warmth feels good, my toes wiggling happily free of ski boots.  I've stared at these pictures so many times, the gold shimmer of those surreal sunrise waves we had one morning, the comical "are we there yet?" written across the back window of my dusty landcruiser.  I slide my feet into a pair of sandals ——

We stay as long as we can.  Every afternoon the offshores kick up and turn sloppy waves into firing sets of perfection and we watch the moon rise before leaving the water.  One night there's a big fish fry over at Norm's camper.  We party around beers and a joint, and one of the older campers introduces himself as Rud to Mariah, and they start talking.  I hear an "Oh my god," and Mariah's laughing, "Rud was my mom's old horseshoer," she says before I have time to ask.  Turns out Rud knew Mariah when she was little, "this tall" he demonstrates, with his hand at his knee, two or three years old "maybe till she was four."  There's a warmth in his face, a happiness in his eye—fond memories.  Not long after that Rud started "camping out" most of the year.  "I've been camping out since 1984," he says with a humble smile.

            The evening brings us all together, laughing and sharing humor like old friends.  How could it be?  A collision of community that feels so natural, so necessary on this random point along the Pacific.  Maybe this is why we do the things we do?  To chase these spontaneous moments, putting ourselves places where they can happen.  Because it seems that when they occur—when the great joyful spirit of humanity mixes with the raw beauty of wild nature—the result is bliss.  Maybe all we're doing is chasing bliss?

—— I stare into the wooden walls of the bathroom.  Inside, this is just a nice cabin, but what lies outside makes it special.  We're snowed-in, several miles from the nearest town, in the wild heart of a rugged mountain range.  A bliss that requires no chasing.  A bliss that ferments, and grows as we learn more about our surroundings, as we explore and discover.  A bliss that is all about the nature of home ——

Out in the water, we've been cheering each other on all week.  They know I'm a beginner, and they're pysched to see me hanging in there all the way to the sand, walking back along the beach with a huge grin on my face.  Norm walks the board with ease, switching stance depending on the mood of the wave, hanging five here and there.  Mariah rides smooth and fast, catching one wave with a couple of sea gulls, and scores of fish backlit in the curl.  Rud says he's "still learning", and laughs because a friend lent him the longboard he's on so that he could learn to surf, and that was about 20 years ago.  "When I get tired of trying I guess I'll give it back to him."

The time comes to leave.  We have to prepare our cabin for the coming winter, our caretaking job begins in a few days.  The waves will keep going, day after day here, but we must leave.  Head home for our northern waves, the ones that fall as flakes, and last for months.  We're sad though.  No more days in surf trunks and sandals, we're going back to the world of insulated boots, and gore-tex.  We straggle through each others camps listlessly saying goodbyes—Rud won't be leaving for another few days at least, and he'll be back down here for the winter.  Ret, the driver of the brown Ford van sits under his awning, Neil Young's "Harvest Moon" sounding from the stereo—he's packed up and ready to keep going along the dirt road, farther up the coast.  "I've never been so sad to leave a place," he says to us, and we agree, Mariah replying, "I know, this has been awesome...so we're all coming back here this time next year right?"   "Hard to say where I'll be," Ret replies, and we sip our mid-morning beers to that.

—— The kettle is whistling on the wood burner, and my mind closes this book of thoughts.  Guitar music fills the cabin with sound, red and white fir branches framing the scene out the windows, no peaks visible in the storm—just white mixing with grey, red bark mixing with green, a few odd looking buildings half submerged like beached whales in the snowpack, they've given up.  We've given up too.  Given up trying to race with the modern world.  We're lucky to have the opportunity of course—this cabin and "the job" that allows it—an eight month escape from everything except ourselves.  We end up living by our dreams, day dreaming about our lives, and casting ideas into the sea of the future.  I'm glad surfing has entered those dreams.  I was just a mountain bum before running into Mariah.

            I sit down in the sunroom, and she is strumming her guitar, maybe writing a song.  I try to write in my journal, haltingly logging: "fleeting sensation of bliss—goosebumps, your hair crawls, rips your eyes out of your head—you want it now and forever."  I pause, thinking, c'mon, make this good, but I can't write any more.  That's it, right there.  Bliss is why I was out in the cold wet snow for a few turns today.  Bliss is why surfing haunts my mind.  Bliss is why I live in an isolated mountain cabin.  The pursuit of bliss is why I live.

              I think about Lucille—the name I've given my 1984 Toyota Landcruiser, parked far away in the desert at a friends house, waiting—gas cans, and water jugs still on the roof next to a shovel and a Hi-Lift jack, camping gear scattered around the interior.  I think of our surfboards resting in another friend's garage—we could grab them easily enough...Probably cross the border in two days of easy driving...my eyes land on a surf magazine tossed in a corner of the room...Yeah.

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