COAST OF MIST AND SPIRITS

Bicycling the Pacific Coast Highway to the Heart of Big Sur

Tom Emory Gilbert

— a story of depression, adventure and the quest for peace —

“We never know how the journeys we take will affect us; what will be revealed in the crucible of time across distance and relationships”

To discover that, the journey must be lived out and experienced.

After the long ride up the coast beneath the July sun, the Gorge appeared like a dream. It was an archetypal swimming hole, the kind a painter of the Hudson School would have sought out—and found idyllic—in the nineteenth century: part oasis, part communal bath, the gathering place. I noticed a makeshift raft tied to a tree on the left upriver bank. I walked over to examine it. In a tart, three-word epithet carved into one of the small supporting logs, someone had forcefully declared precisely what the United States Government could do with its Vietnam draft.

I smiled. Though I supported the war, something in the cheekiness of the sentiment resonated with me.

~ excerpt from Coast of Mist and Spirits

In the summer of 1970, Tom Gilbert and two friends began a 375-plus mile journey from Southern California to Big Sur on the Pacific Coast Highway.

Coast of Mist and Spirits is the author’s coming-of-age memoir that tells the story of that summer.

Deep in the Big Sur backcountry, events take a dark turn as the full effects of resentment, spite and spiritual forces which accumulated over the long miles of riding work their way into the story, resulting in a moral choice with a potentially disastrous outcome.

Coast of Mist and Spirits traces an arc running through youthful idealism to failure, despair and cynicism before rounding up to grace, hope and redemption, ultimately serving as a metaphor for every generation.

“A land of mountains, trees, and water called my name once, along with a slender shoulder of California highway that could take me there. Together, the land and the highway beckoned me to venture outside the boundaries of my habitual life with a bouquet of promises: scented redwood groves, prehistoric rock formations bursting forth from the sea, a canyon over whose bottom an ancient stream of water flowed.”

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