There’s nothing further west than California. When the sun dips down into the ocean here, it’s heading back to the east. There’s nowhere left to run to. That makes me uneasy for some reason. All those old pioneers, they came to California either to escape something or to find something, or maybe both. That’s no longer an option.
Some days, when it gets cloudy enough, I imagine the land continues on through the clouds, or the mountains keep rising up past where I know they end. Maybe there’s land out there, further west than the Big Sur coast. Further west than the tired, shabby harbors of San Diego and San Francisco’s cold gate with it’s thin coat of gold paint cracking and showing the rust beneath.
Not fairyland, of course, not the dreams of George MacDonald and Andrew Lang, but something much more real.