Yesterday, my girlfriend and I joined some friends for lunch at a local Capitola Village restaraunt called El Toro Bravo. The food was delicious, as usual. After lunch, we wanted to get outside and do something new. We are new to the area, so it isn’t hard to find something we haven’t seen yet. We decided to go check out Moon Rock, a local “secret”.
To get there, we drove through UC Santa Cruz, winding through the wooded hills on small country roads reminiscent of my rural-town upbringing. The green foilage lining the road danced in the breeze, the sun shining down through the branches and the fog with a soft muffled brilliance. The drive to Moon Rock takes about twenty minutes from downtown Santa Cruz, but once you park your car you feel like you are hours from any significant town.
We parked the car and walked a couple miles down the road to a spot where we could crawl under a fence. Above us, smooth rocky ridges and cliffs were stacked like giant legos. The rocks are coarse and fragile, like hardened sand, and is spiderwebbed in places with small trenches dug by winter runoff.
It only takes under half an hour to get to the top of the rocks, but the trail is steep and you gain elevation quickly. I was out of breath by the time we made it up.
I climbed up a small wall with footholds carved into the soft stone, rounded a bend, and approached the peak. I was instantly taken by the view, which stretches in every direction as far as you can see. The trees below roll over the hills like a green carpet and on a clear day you can see the ocean in the distance. Beautiful cabins are nestled among the hills, some built up against the rocky crests jutting up from the forest floor. As I looked at the steep, rocky crags jutting from the smooth rolling hills and valleys, I wondered what magnificent Earth processes created them.
The high perch caught me off guard for a moment and my heart began to race. I am a little frightened by heights, but I do not let it hold me down. I have even gone skydiving twice. Still, I have not completely eradicated the fear. I sat down for a moment and scanned the gorgeous view as the wind surrounded me, pushing against me with a firm hand as if to remind me of my insignificance. The rocks are covered in carvings etched by the hundreds or thousands of visitors who came before me to capture the same feeling I felt as I sat there. Drawings and sculptures pop up like islands among the thousands of signatures and scrawls.
After sitting for a moment, I reminded myself my own feet knew how to hold me up, and I stood with my friends to walk around and peer over the edge, grateful for the coarse stone which provided great tracking for my sneakers. The wind continued threatening to peel me away, but my apprehension faded and I found myself carefully exploring. In one spot, someone has carved all the way through a two-foot rock wall to provide a view of the hills beyond.
We took pictures of each other standing atop the cliffs and sat on the first perch for a while longer, as it had the best views, carving our own names into the stone. As the rest of my group filed down towards the trail to go home, I stood for a moment alone, looking out over the world before me and felt the familiar wanderlust tugging at my spirit. When I first came up on the peak, I had thought to myself, “Maybe I better scratch mountain climbing off of my list.” Now, as I stood there and let the wind blow my fears and insecurites from my body, my spirit swelled and soared among the mountaintops below and beyond. “Look what I would miss if I gave in to my fears and doubts,” I thought to myself, and imagined the view from mountaintops ten or twenty times this height and the sense of accomplishment I would feel if I conquered their peaks. I could sit inside my whole life and avoid the danger of falling or discomfort of facing my fears but then what would be the point of living at all? Indeed, this thought is the essence of travel.
I joined the others and made my way back down to Earth, reluctant to leave. We capped the night off with some barbecued burgers, a few beers, and a game of poker. It was a day worth living.
If you make it to Santa Cruz, you might find this spot hard to find. I don’t think it is in any guide books. But it is an easy climb and it isn’t too far from town. Your best bet is to get out on the town and meet some locals. Most of them surely know how to get there. Local spots like this one make every town unique, but unfortunately most tourists never bother to open the right doors when they travel. Make your trip unique by experiencing the unique.
My Moment Of Life 