I am an explorer. i always have been. i enjoyed what i lovingly refer to as a "free-range" childhood, meaning that i was given a long leash (within reason). one of the places that dots my nostalgic map is morro bay, my family has gone there for years. my parents and grandparents used to rent a house in cayucos for a week or two every summer, and since nothing happend in cayucos we always went to morro bay. i may have previously mentioned montana de oro in an earlier post, and that has always been one of my favorite places on earth. so a trip to morro bay is full of fond memories, and marvels at the changes to the town, but there is something else lurking out there, just across the water.
On the fringes of nostalgia for childhood places is Narnia. or rather Narnias. Narnias are places that were magical, unreachable places in childhood. Sometimes they can be as simple as a parent's closet, or as far off as hidden temples in cambodian jungles. i have many of these places, and when possible i try to go and explore them. The reality is that the places we remember from childhood are pale ghosts whose vivid colors and experiences lasted no longer than our own youth. Sometimes it is sad to return somewhere to find only ashes of what was. One remedy for this is a Narnia.
Saturday, i got meg and the dog up (relatively) early and rented a canoe from the marina in morro bay state park. if you are familiar with the area it is way, way south of town before the marshes that become los osos. we set out across the bay, the three of us, to the sand spit that creates the nominal bay. it seemed like a long paddle. and eventually i realized that the water was only a foot deep in places. it turns out that you could walk halfway across the bay and not get your waist wet. eventually we came ashore. This was unexplored territory, always viewed longingly from across the bay. i had watched people in kayaks, and on surfboards make the impossible crossing and imagined the wonders that awaited them. i had reached Narnia.
What was there is not the important part. It was magical, i assure you. but the best part was that even before we landed, i was a 10 year old me on the adventure. I ran around and looked at every rock that interested me, followed animal tracks in the sand, pondered my surroundings with all the wonder of childhood. all because i had never actually been there. it might have been three times as amazing 20 years ago, and that doesn't matter because i can't be nostalgic for it. my wife probably thought i was crazy, no, she is pretty much used to this kind of crazy from me by now. but it was nice that she came along to see it. and the dog, it was really cool to have a dog as a companion, not just dragging along on a leash. we chased eachother around the dunes and generally wore ourselves out.
i can't encourage you enough. Seek out your Narnias and explore them, go back in time, be young again, take friends with you, new places are tomorrow's nostalgia.
