Memorably we hitch-hiked with our friend Jack to Pfeiffer State Beach at Big Sur. This was a mythical place where the legendary Henry Miller had set up home. We ambled two miles down the steep dirt road to the beach and arrived as the sun was getting low. There was a line of Freaks on the beach passing jays, strumming guitars and watching the sun slide down as the waves crashed through the big hole in the large rock in the middle of the bay. It was idyllic.
The sea turned orange, crimson, and then a deep mauve with turquoise foam on the waves.
After the sun had set we all got a big campfire lit and sat around eating, drinking, passing jays and strumming.
Then we got bust.
Opher at Big Sur 1971
The cops rolled up and rounded us all up. They frisked us down and informed us that it was illegal to camp on the beach. They threatened Liz and me with deportation. However they didn’t find any dope and decided to take us back up the road and dump us at the side of the highway.
We ended up getting our sleeping bags out and sleeping at the side of the road. It was a magical night up there in the Sierras. A huge wind got up and threatened to blow us away. Then it went completely calm and the sky was so clear the Milky Way was like a band of thick smoke and the heavens were a mass of stars. There were no spaces between them. I’d never seen anything like it. We lay on our back and stared up into the cosmos and talked while the mountain lions roared in the hills around us. We talked about life, infinity and the universe and it all seemed so incredibly near as if we were connected to it all like some great mystical dream.
Our world tour petered out into reality.
We came back penniless having literally spent our last dollar in getting a tiny present, a wind up plastic frog for the bath, in Macy’s, for my baby sister.
College was over. The 60s were over. I had to get a job.
I got a temporary job as a lab tech at my old college. It was a sort of halfway house. I could pretend I was still living the dream but I’d really sold my soul to mammon. We had to pay the rent. This was confirmed in 1973 when we had our first baby. The carefree hitch-hiking, sleeping on floors and partying all night, the mad rapping and idealistic dreams were replaced by a tempered realism.