Big Sur Read Free

home there’d been something larkish, bucolic, all homely woods and gladness instead of all this aerial roaring mystery in the dark—When the cab leaves I therefore turn on my railroad lantern for a timid peek but its beam gets lost just like the car lights in a void and in fact the battery is fairly weak and I can hardly see the bluff at my left—As for the bridge I cant see it anymore except for graduating series of luminous shoulder buttons going off further into the low sea roar—The sea roar is bad enough except it keeps bashing and barking at me like a dog in the fog down there, sometimes it booms the earth but my God where is the earth and how can the sea be underground!—“The only thing to do,” I gulp, “is to put this lantern shinin right in front of your feet, kid do, and follow that lantern and make sure it’s shinin on the road rut and hope and pray it’s shinin on ground that’s gonna be there when it’s shining,” in other words I actually fear that even my lamp will carry me astray if I dare to raise it for a minute from the ruts in the dirt road—The only satisfaction I can glean from this roaring high horror of darkness is that the lamp wobbles huge dark shadows of its little rim stays on the overhanging bluff at the left of the road, because to the right (where the bushes are wiggling in the wind from the sea) there aint no shadows because there aint no light can take hold—So I start my trudge, pack aback, just head down following my lamp spot, head down but eyes suspiciously peering a little up, like a man in the presence of a dangerous idiot he doesnt want to annoy—The dirt road starts up a little, curves to the right, starts down a little, then suddenly up again, and up—By now the sea roar is further back and at one point I even stop and look back to see nothing—“I’m gonna put out my light and see what I can see” I say rooted to my feet where they’re rooted to that road—Fat lotta good, when I put out the light I see nothing but the dim sand at my feet.
    Trudging up and getting further away from the sea roar I get to feel more confident but suddenly I come to a frightening thing in the road, I stop and hold out my hand, edge forward, it’s only a cattle crossing (iron bars imbedded across the road) but at the same time a big blast of wind comes from the left where the bluff should be and I spot that way and see nothing. “What the hell’s going on!” “Follow the road,” says the other voice trying to be calm so I do but the next instant I hear a rattling to my right, throw my light there, see nothing but bushes wiggling dry and mean and just the proper high canyonwall kind of bushes fit for rattlesnakes too—(which it was, a rattlesnake doesnt like to be awakened in the middle of the night by a trudging humpbacked monster with a lamp.)
    But now the road’s going down again, the reassuring bluff reappears on my left, and pretty soon according to my memory of Lorry’s map there she is, the creek, I can hear her lappling and gabbing down there at the bottom of the dark where at least I’ll be on level ground and done with booming airs somewhere above—But the closer I get to the creek as the road dips steeply, suddenly, almost making me trot forward, the louder it roars, I begin to think I’ll fall right into it before I can notice it—It’s screaming like a raging flooded river right below me—Besides it’s even darker down there than anywhere! There are glades down there, ferns of horror and slippery logs, mosses, dangerous plashings, humid mists rise coldly like the breath of death, big dangerous trees are beginning to bend over my head and brush my pack—There’s a noise I know can only grow louder as I sink down and for fear how loud it can grow I stop and listen, it rises up crashing mysteriously at me from a raging battle among