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STRATEGY FOR THE DAY: go creatively wild

I drove from Los Angeles to San Jose yesterday. The weather was perfect early June-stuff - all shiny, golden sky over silver-blue waves. Going up the coast through Malibu is the fastest way to leave the city behind. Very quickly you are between stark, loose-rock cliffs on the right and pounding surf to the left. In between is this little thread of Highway 1 that looks like it has no business being there. Just before Oxnard (don't ask), you turn right and cut over to Highway 101 across about 5 miles of farmland - brocolli, brussels sprouts, lettuce. Living in the city, it's easy to forget that California is still the Big Farm country of John Steinbeck and William Saroyan.

I merged onto Highway 101 and saw the sign "Ventura Highway" - the real name of this road, at least this section of it. The radio in my head started playing... "Ventura Highway in the sunshine / Where the days are longer / The nights are stronger than moonshine. Da... da... da... something about purple rain / Alligator lizards in the air..." Now there's a lyric that reeks of patchouli and LSD if there ever was one!

This same highway was once called El Camino Real; it was the road the padres followed north as they built the missions - one every thirty miles - forcibly converting the local natives as they went. The names of the towns along the route still ring like the mission bells - Santa Barbara, San Buenaventura, San Luis Obispo, San Miguel, Santa Clara, San Jose, Oxnard (don't ask).

The ocean appears and disappears as one drives north. Past Santa Barbara the landscape is all muted shades of sandy beige and sage green. Softly undulating hills scattered with scrub oaks - their twisted trunks fire-blackened. I took a short cut through the San Marcos pass (those pesky padres, again!) and flew by the tiny town of Los Olivos - this is Michael Jackson country, though everyone hopes it won't be remembered for that. It's beautiful, remote, ageless. An apt place to build a neverland.

I stopped, as I always do, at Avila Hot Springs for a soak in the sulpher springs. The Olympic-size swimming pool was skin-temperature - my favorite. Then, back on the road for the long haul across the Central Valley. Three hours of flatland covered in neatly tractored rows of whatever is growing this time of year. More vineyards now than before.

Finally pulled into San Jose about 7:30 and headed up into the hills to my destination. Still hearing those alligator lizards in my head and feeling a nice buzz from the sunshine - at least I think that's what it was from.

Copyright 2004 Robin Frederick. All rights reserved.

Read A Brief History Of Love Songs by Robin Frederick at the Sound Experience Music web site.