Off The Mountain

So, I had a few days off from Hume.
I just finished my first whole summer working at Hume Lake. I've worked there just bits and pieces for years, but never a whole summer. I'm not sure how much this one can count, since I was in four different departments and spent three weeks in San Diego running camp off the mountain. I was working up there all winter at the Joshua Wilderness Institute, since September. We had trips once a month to San Francisco, LA, Las Vegas, San Diego, Ensenada, Israel. So, I've by no means been stuck in one place. But, I still feel stir crazy and unsettled. I'm restless, still.

So, I find myself with some time off...
I made last minute plans to head toward the central coast of California. I thought maybe I would hit up a few hostels or a campground or two. I had a few errands to run in Fresno, and finally bought a cheap computer, without which you wouldn't be seeing this. I had dinner in Fresno with some Hume staff, spent the night and next day with them. Then, I headed back to Reedley for a house concert with New Heights on tour from Washington. I spent the night with the band at Ryan Corum's Road 56. And, then got on the 41 South toward Pismo Beach.

It had to be the beach... the ocean, the crashing waves, the sea gulls, the salty smell calling me. So I drove.

After spending money on a computer, I decided to go super low budget on the rest of the trip. As much as I love Shifty, he is not Fabulous for his consumption of gas. My major cost on this trip would be gas. Pismo was the closest beach. A stop at Food Maxx (That's Food-4-Less in SoCal) and $10.41 bought food for the week. (Bagels, Tuna, Black Beans, Corn Tortillas, and Tapitio) The Oceano Dunes in Pismo are the cheapest place to camp at $10 night. I didn't have a tent, so I spent $3 on a tarp to lay my sleeping bag on. I had this great plan to grab scrap wood from some dumpsters for a fire. I found a broken pallet behind a Vons and loaded it into my truck. Unfortunately when I got to the security booth at the entrance, I wasn't allowed in with the pallet. So, I ditched it behind another Vons, and actually spent $5 on firewood. The tide was high; the beach wasn't too crowded. I drove about three miles south and found a fairly open spot in the flat sand, fifty yards from the edge of the water.

















I made my camp and started a fire. The hot fish tacos were delicious, especially because I was just sitting on the sand with a little fire. I think that if Jesus was from California ( I know some of you think that He was, but He wasn't.) But, if He was, He would have cooked fish tacos on the beach and shared them with his disciples.


I walked over to the edge of the water and just stared out to sea. Slowly, then suddenly a huge smile crept over my face. a big smile, one of those ones that I couldn't hold in if I tried. At first I didn't know why I was so filled with joy, or that I was smiling at all. It was that goofy kind of smile that you might normally try to hide if you knew others could see you They couldn't; it was dark. Suddenly, I realized that I was crying, tears streaming silently down my face, happy tears. This is good. God is good. I remembered standing on rocks out in the surf at the cliffs above Del Mar with Nick Maybury and Tim Mika six years ago on night like this. Our moods had been heavy all day, and suddenly it was all gone, swept away by the tide. So we sang songs of worship together standing together in the midst of God's overwhelmingly beautiful creation. It's like standing in a waterfall. I remembered that same spot a year later on one knee with a girl. Bittersweet. The tears taste sad now, they were happy then. Still the waves wash over the rocks and sand, smoothing out the holes, carrying out to sea all that is temporary.
So I sang songs of worship to the God who is Faithful, who is constant, who Is.
He is so, great and mighty, so powerful and unchanging, full of justice, yet intensely personal!
He is so close to the broken hearted.
I need this.
I need Him.

















Just as my fire was starting to die down, a huge motor-home got stuck in the sand forty feet away, between my camp and the ocean. They couldn't get it out with their "Bakersfield Truck" (Lifted, full-size, quad-cab, with tires that look like off-road, but are designed to never leave the road.) So, they set up camp right where they were stuck. Turns out, that was just the beginning of their caravan. Next came, two more motor-homes with dune buggies in tow and another truck with Sand Quads stacked high. I would call it a flotilla, but they weren't floating. I would call them Summer Folk, but Summer is over. Still, I felt like Willy Potts: "Thick as sand fleas and twice as pesky."
Screeeeeee!
They revved their engines, testing and tuning each vehicle, driving in circles around me, shining their HID Baja lights at me in my sleeping bag, over and over till 2am. I could see the light of a light house off in the distance cutting through the fog over the ocean. I thought it was beautiful. But, now, I felt like I was inside a light house. Closing my eyes didn't help much.
I realized, that most of the people who camp down here have spent lots of money on camping toys. It's definitely not the same crowd that we see up in the Sierra Nevada mountains around Hume. I haven't seen a single pair of Birkenstocks and mine was the oldest vehicle on the sand, except for a large yellow Yamaha 400 from the 70s. If I hadn't just seen it out of gas on the road to Shep's house at Hume, I would have thought that it was the old Ferreira bike that was on my first desert trip to Ocotilla Wells in High School. Once they were done, and cozy in their luxury-mobile toybox, it got real peaceful. I couldn't see the stars for the foggy clouds, but the sounds of the ocean and the feel its cool breeze on my face put me to sleep quickly. I slept hard, not waking until 10am. I broke camp and took Shifty out to play in the dunes while they were still asleep. It's not the most peaceful beach, but it's the cheapest beach, and I'll probably spend one more night down here. Then I'll head north toward Big Sur.