Don Francsico (October 1, 1970)

The cool of night descended on the deserted desert beach.  I sit cross-legged brooding at the side of the car.  My pits became sticky from that uncomfortable alchemic reaction of nervous perspiration mixed with the deodorant.  The other symptoms of fear quickly followed: the thick tongue filing against the dry roof of the mouth; and an empty void somewhere in the abdominal region.  The road—for lack of a better word—could be straddled by stretching my not too very long legs—the width of the front of my car.  The Datsun 1600 Roadster sat immovable and unperturbed with one wheel just a fraction off the road free spinning above the loose sand; the other was busily competing and compensating to bury itself at a comparable depth whirring in the sand.

I stood up after several minutes of futile meditation and walked ahead on the yet more narrowing road and climbed to the crest of a small dune.  In the late afternoon sky I could see the beach was only a few hundred yards away.           

Millions of fossil shells including delicate sand dollars landscaped the ground and crunched breaking like pieces of plaster as I stepped on them.  I walked a few more yards wishing that my car wasn't stuck and that we could pitch the tent on the beach ahead.  I turned back and reached the top of the knoll confronted with a miniature vignette of life: my wife staring apprehensively at the car and our dog Pico, running around in the sand stopping only momentarily to sniff and snort.

Jesus! I knew we were going to get stuck when we turned down the cow pasture trail that I mistook as the road.  Yet somehow I had managed to backup and get back on the main path.  What a place to get stuck; and all alone.  Well, if and when we got out of here, it certainly would make a good story to tell our friends.  Strange it is how the mind always thinks about the best for the future.

Why the hell had I listened to the old man who told me to cross the arroyo and go up the other side so I could camp on the beach?  I should have stayed on his property which was only a few hundred yards from the beach and still on a decent road.  But I hadn't liked the hovel of his house, and the several trailers moored to his land.
Somehow that ruined my image of a deserted beach where one could commune alone with nature, run wild without any clothes on, and just plain sun in the nude.

And now we were alone, uncomfortably so, unsure just how we would exit from
our present predicament; exit from our present troubles.

Well, I must be able to get this car out. I really didn't have any alternatives. I opened the trunk and took out my chains. Good thing I had bought them although I had been intending to use them in the Sierras, but I hadn't hit any snow there.