The summer I was 15 I drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, past Hearst Castle and Big Sur to Lompoc, so that my cousin could visit the wild horse sanctuary there. The gas in Big Sur cost $3 a gallon, and at the time I remember thinking that was incredibly expensive. Someone once told me that Grace Kelly died when she drove her car off of one of the cliffs that hugged the PCH; I still don’t know if that’s true, but it always seemed like such a glamorous death. I imagined a white scarf wrapped around her neck fluttering out of the convertible’s windows as the car tumbled into the sea.
In Lompoc we settled in a crappy seaside motel that reeked of fish oil. I slept dreamlessly on a fold out couch with a stain in the shape of a starfish. The next day we visited the wild horses. My Aunt worked for In Defense of Animals and was friends with the owner, so we got a private tour. My cousin Amelia was seven at the time, and as we walked out onto the pasture her face lit up with glee. I was terrified of the beasts that surrounded us. They were powerful and majestic, but there was something menacing about the way they could strike out at any time. These were wild horses, not domesticated. “Try not to make any sudden movements,” our guide told us, “We don’t want to startle them, or it could get ugly.” I was frightened and couldn’t wait to leave. The only thing I took away from the trip was that Hillary Duff was the celebrity protector of the horse sanctuary. At the time I really liked Lizzie McGuire, so I thought that was pretty cool.
On the way back into San Francisco I felt like I was coming home again. We’d been gone six days but there was something triumphant about driving over the Golden Gate: we’d conquered the coast and now we were back. I loved those summers spent in Marin picking blackberries in my Aunt’s backyard and cooking tofu concoctions. I’d walk their dog Poppy around the neighborhood without shoes on, because that’s what you did in San Francisco: you went barefoot and ate organic fruit and read poetry and stayed up late watching foreign films. I could dance around in the living room and write beneath the ivy that hung from the scalloped awning of the back porch. I did all of these things and I did them with such joy that it almost felt absurd, because in San Francisco I was happy, and back home I almost never was.
When I was 15 I would sit in my bedroom listening to records and reading Ginsberg’s “Howl,” knees pressed into my bedspread so that they’d turn up crinkled and raw. It was in the poetry room at City Lights, a cramped, intimate place bursting with history, that I first admitted I wanted to be a writer. 15 years old, a copy of 
Burroughs’ Naked Lunch in my hands and I made that declaration to one of the last remaining Beats who flirted with me beside the stacks of Kerouac books. Gently placing his left hand on the small of my back, with the other arm he reached for a copy of a biography he’d written about spoken word poet, Bob Kaufman. I was completely mesmerized by this man. His spine was curved with age and when he laughed I could see pieces of food stuck between his upper teeth. There was something about him that made it impossible to lie anymore. I had always known that I loved to write, but up until that moment I had never considered myself a Writer. Paging through his book in the dimness of City Lights, the realization almost knocked me to the ground.
I stood on my tiptoes to level myself with his gaze and looked him straight in the eye. “I want to be a writer,” I said. He smiled and I felt something in me relax. “I am a writer,” I said with more force. Other people in the room turned to look at us, and my ears began to redden. He took the copy of his book from my hands and signed it, and when I left he kissed my cheek.
Years later, I wrote a letter to him after too many glass of wine: “It’s impossible to express how critical meeting you was to the realization that not only do I want to be a writer, but that I can do this,” it began.
Unsure where to mail it to, or even if he was still alive, I never sent it.
You are an amazing writer. – random stranger who occasionally reads and always enjoys your work.
Aww, thank you Donna!