Background

A DISPATCH FROM DOWN SOUTH

Pavones CampsiteI’m watching through my camper’s open door as the first wave of a stacked-up set wraps in from the south and charges across the seascape in the dreamy glow of first light. The wave churns its way through the inside shallows, then rushes over the beach in front of my campsite, which was dry a few hours ago at low water. I thought I’d be safe here from inundation, but still the wave comes, up and over the sloping dirt berm separating beach from jungle; then it sloshes under my hammock, rousing my dog Shiner and chasing her inland from her nest there. In its final throes now, the dying wave gurgles under my doorstep and then suddenly all earthly traces of it are gone. It’s a fierce expiration I have witnessed.

I sip my coffee and consider my options as the rest of the set, wave by wave, probes my position, each successive incursion reaching a yard or so further inland than the one preceding it, until the last wave disappears under the Ford’s front bumper with a crackle and a hiss. The groundswell has been on the rise since I ran out of road in my travels here yesterday afternoon and is rising still; and the full moon high tide has another hour of flood before it peaks and begins its withdrawal.

In all prudence, a move to higher ground would seem to be called for. But since when in my life have I conducted myself prudently? No, I’ll ride out the rising tide, make a stand. I need not fear the water, or so I’ve been told.

I seem to be attracted to end-of-the-road places. Montauk – my home on the last left on Long Island before the lighthouse -- was at road’s end. So was the Punta Lobo campground up in Baja, at which I tarried for so long last year. Back on the Caribbean side where I found my vanished old friend Christopher some three months ago: the end of the road. And here, this wilderness I have come to on the Pacific, the road likewise ends here. So for the second time I have come to the bottom of coastal Central America.

Perhaps my attraction to these sorts of locales lies in their feel of voluntary isolation, inaccessibility and seclusion. The sense that one is unlikely to be disturbed by some fool asking directions to somewhere else -- people do not pass through end-of-the-road places. There is also the sense that the civilized world has been tilted and given a of shake, with the result that those individuals with the most tenuous grasp on what is considered normalcy have slid down the resulting figurative slope and collected at the bottom, from where there is nowhere left to go, and where are formed enclaves and subcultures rooted in extremes.

And often, I’ve found, waves will be encountered at end-of-the-road places.

Yes, there is a wave here all right. A point wave steeped in both speed and stamina, a rare combination on this planet. With a sizable, long period south swell like the one still building out my back door, spawned by some far distant Southern Ocean tempest, the wave here is so fast and so long as to be almost hallucinogenic. A miracle of a wave.

Not much here, in terms of the works of modern man. There is a cantina just down the shore from my campsite in the bush, looking out upon the middle part of this long, long wave, and by which charged a horseman on the beach yesterday, wild hair flying and a surfstick tucked under his arm. And there is a little fish camp further along, around the point from the cantina.

A long, fast point wave. A cantina and a fish camp. Horsemen carrying surfboards. The end of the road.

Everything about this place suits me fine. I believe I’ll stay for a while.

Pavones, Costa Rica, June 17, 1997

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