Escape to the Coast

Albert Bierstadt was a German-born American painter. He was well known for his landscape paintings of the West. To authentically paint these scenes, he actually joined others on their journeys to a part of America they had not yet seen. When Bierstadt brought his paintings back home to the east coast, people did not believe what they were seeing because they had not seen nor experienced the landscapes that he had painted.

I chose this painting of the ocean in California because I grew up in Northern California. If you are from there, and you want to take a drive out to the ocean, you say that you are “going to the coast.” From my hometown of Santa Rosa, driving to the coast took about 45 minutes.

My teen years were filled with the divorce of my parents, the normal drama of girlfriends, and the angst and newness of boyfriends. One of my favorite things to do was to escape out to the coast, especially very late at night, never planning which particular road I’d take. There was a tangible feeling of comfort as my Jensen-Healey sports car and I would wind our way through landscapes of farms, redwood trees, and small towns. My 8-track tapes kept me company as they played Cat Stevens and Leo Sayer––I was in heaven. For several hours, into the dark of  the night, I could leave my youthful problems behind. I owned the night, and it felt good.

Escaping doesn’t last forever, and I eventually had to return and face my reality, but having somewhere to escape is food for the soul. Just as the ocean appeared to have no end, when I drove out to the coast, my time alone there was as an eternity.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albert_Bierstadt_-_Farallon_Islands,_California_(c.1872).jpg