‘The light takes its color from the sea’

James D. Houston said that in the title of the last book he published during his lifetime, just months before his death in 2009. From the late 1960s when I arrived in Santa Cruz and Jim’s national profile as a novelist and nonfiction writer was rising, right through to the end, by which time the area was exploding with literary talent, Jim was the preeminent “local” writer, rooted in the geography of the region and using it as a setting and a subject of many of his books. He knew that light intimately from his perch near Twin Lakes where his home gave him a view of his beloved bay.

This time of year, just past the solstice when the days are lengthening but the sun is angled low in the sky and casting long shadows that seem to sharpen everything’s outline, and the air is clear and cool between storms, and Monterey’s purple mountain can be seen in its majesty across the reflective water, that sentence comes to mind both as testimony of Jim’s lyrical insight and evidence of our luck in living here. The nights may be long and cold, the old year may well be the worst ever for almost everyone, the coronavirus may still be out of control despite the first wave of vaccinations, the economy and its human victims may be in dire condition, and the latest lockdown may have us climbing the walls wondering when this shared nightmare will end, yet still, if we step outside for a walk, especially anywhere along the shoreline or high enough into the foothills to feast our eyes on the view, we are reminded to marvel at the beauty of our surroundings.

This is not news. It is the background, foreground and middleground of the real estate rush and affordable housing crisis the community has been suffering since Silicon Valley made millionaires of many of its workers and everyone and their life coach decided they wanted to live in Surf City. If we are lucky enough to be housed and healthy, we can thank whatever gods for the privilege of having landed here in time to be here now. That awareness of our good fortune is reason enough for gratitude to be surrounded by such a splendid environment even in the worst of times. This may be small comfort to anyone suffering any of the numerous afflictions currently rampant, but it is some comfort nonetheless.

Last summer’s fires that fouled the air with toxic smoke and added a layer of meaning to “I can’t breathe” as the year’s most resonant sentence; the fires that took the homes of hundreds of our friends and neighbors in the mountains; that turned the sky one afternoon to the spookiest, gloomiest, doomiest shade of orange-tinged apocalyptic charcoal gray I’ve ever seen — after the most spectacular lightning storm I’ve ever awakened in the middle of the night to witness — those devastating fires are a foretaste of future disasters driven by a warming planet and a still- clueless, all-consuming humanity; they provide a melodramatic contrast to the crystalline atmosphere of this otherwise darkest dead- of-winter.

But it’s the light of various times of day that reminds me to pay attention and hold those colors close to my heart: morning with its blinding sunrise behind the Pinnacles pinkening the air and turning it pale blue, midafternoon with its brilliant shades of cerulean tinting into indigo as the day ages, twilight with its purpling streaks and washes across the horizon far too expansive to be caught in a video — these changing colors keep me deep in the moment savoring every last wisp of cloud or flock of birds in transit but held in the mind’s eye as evidence of grace that outsmarts understanding. This is the paradoxical light revealed in the middle of a tunnel with no end in sight. All the more reason to bathe in its generous glow.