A Walk to the Cliff

In a place I used to go

Early morning, looking west over the Pacific Ocean, near Santa Barbara, California

“A Walk to the Cliff” is a short piece I wrote a few years ago in Santa Barbara, California. It’s found a home online at Tiny Molecules.

Please go there and take a look! It’s a different piece entirely from the one that follows—but on the subject of Santa Barbara, I got to wondering…

How many places in the world are yours? I mean, places you’re bonded with—so when you’re far away, you feel for them if they’re in the news. You have people there or memorable events and pictures in your head.

Santa Barbara found a place on my personal map when my grandma and Aunt Dorcas moved there from the Midwest. I was 5. I knew it was a loooooong way cause my family drove West to see them every spring, until my sister hit middle school and couldn’t be gone for a month.

We drove a different highway every year, which added dots to my map: Denver, where my cousins lived. Glacier Park, where I found a driftwood horse on a beach. Taos, where my mother was in 4th grade during the Depression.

Think of a place on your life map… what’s the picture or person or thing it brings back?

Santa Barbara

…my swimsuit filled with gritty sand from body-surfing shallow waves at the edge of blue.

…my first avocado when Dorcas walked me up the hill to an overgrown avocado grove behind their house to pick them ripe from the ground. Home again, she sliced one in half, doused the halves with lemon and salt and pepper, and we carved them out with spoons.

More recently, with Grandma gone and especially after Dorcas broke her hip, I ranged all over the city on yearly and half-yearly visits from Seattle to clean her fridge, help her move, sort her mail, meet her friends, and drive her to places she liked to shop. Even after she gave up driving, Dorcas could direct us anywhere—from Montecito for lunch to Goleta for her audiologist. And oh, my gosh! The Santa Barbara Home Improvement Center has anything and everything, from paper to plastics to plants. And I met a new neighborhood with every stay, each AirBnB, searching for morning coffee, avocado toast, and a place to take a walk before finding my way back to her list.

Dorcas is gone now. She died in 2020 at 96—not from COVID, but alone, since her facility snapped itself shut for safety. They were good about putting the phone to her ear.

But Santa Barbara will always be on my mental map. I perk up when it’s in the news. I worry about folks there when the fire creep down the mountain or storms come off the sea. I’m sort of relieved now that my worry is general, not specific.

Which dots on the map do you own?

Aunt Dorcas with her cat, Patches. I can’t remember why her lamp was on the floor that day.