There's an ailment common to many Oak Glen fathers: we don't really like taking vacations. Greg Anton told me his father, Wally, was very hesitant to leave this little valley. He would ask his kids "mountains or beach?" hoping they would say mountains, and thus be tricked into staying on the hill. I know that Benita is hard pressed to push Scott off the mountain as well. As for me, I tell the kids, "we live in paradise. Why leave?"
My wife, Mary the Greek, has responded to this reality by making vacations, for me, something like the arrival of ABC's Extreme Makeover super-bus. All I have to do is show up, and I'm whisked away without worry. My clothing is packed. My contact lens paraphernalia is neatly readied. My favorite snack foods are purchased--in ample supply. If you've ever seen BBC's version of P.G. Wodehouses, "Jeeves & Wooster" where Jeeves could prepare English morning tea & cream with nothing but a cow in the meadow and a tin of Earl Grey in his coat pocket, you know something about Mary's resourcefulness.
This time, we landed in San Simeon State Park, in the Washburn campground, where a neat little grove of pine shaded the grassy berm behind the campsite. This tree-canopy looked out upon one of those pastoral vistas that made 18th century gentlemen stop to sharpen their quills and summon up verse by the lambent light of memory. In the distance, of course, was the gentle Pacific, framing the whole western horizon, lapping up onto a forest of Eucalyptus, and then on to the coffee-tilled earth of what looked like a new vineyard in the making. In nearly every direction there was that milky green flourish of pasture grass, and in certain lights you could see distinct herds of cattle moving over and behind the shadow of hills impossibly far away. The highest ridges, in the distance, were covered with oak forests that implied a kind of Tolkienesque mystery of yet more vistas, more rolling valleys, more "cattle on a thousand hills." It was a battle-commander's vista--without the battle.
My beef with vacations, generally, is that they can't compete with that very Tolkienesque power of imagination, or that Madison Avenue version of the RV sitting next to the Montana lakeside--with no one else around and three pound steelheads jumping into the frying pan of their own accord. Imagination, however, can actually be less spectacular than reality. There's a blue flower that comes up on the meadows outside Santa Maria, and it splays out across the pasture grass in misty indigo clouds that roll along with the wind. You would have to wait for a dream to witness a steel black Angus feeding in blankets of blue meadow, but sometimes you get to see just such things on vacation.
We camped with two other families, and two of the eight year old boys, before the tents were even pitched, had a flashlight and a magnifying glass out to examine the tracks in the spring mud. The doors on the cars were just barely open, and Sam and Lockton were busy turning a dog print into the signs of a bear that had just passed through.
"Is that a bear, Mr. Riley?"
"Looks like a dog," I said.
The two of them appeared disappointed by my candor.
"Hmmm," I said, looking again, "maybe so. Maybe a bear cub."
They seemed satisfied with the possibility they were now tracking the wild.
Eric and Nicholas and Lockton and Samuel set up their tent. Mary brought me an extra jacket, and a chair. Within a few minutes, the campfire was picking up strength, and she handed me a glass of chardonnay.
"What do you think?" she asked.
"Couldn't be any better," I replied.
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