Life in a COVID-19 Hot Spot- Week 29: Getaway Gone
Our favorite getaway spot, just an hour and a half from the busy Bay Area, has been the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove. This historic retreat was originally a YWCA leadership camp , with historic redwood buildings designed by Julia Morgan, who also designed many of the buildings at William Randolph Hearst’s La Cuesta Encantada in San Simeon (AKA Hearst Castle). The Center is nestled amid cypress trees and sand dunes just across from Asilomar State Beach on the quiet side of the Monterey Peninsula, separated from touristy and cutesified Carmel by the gorgeous twisting 17-Mile-Drive along the Monterey coastline. .
For the first part of the Lockdown, the Conference center was commandeered by the State as a place to quarantine people who had been exposed to the virus. After the first surge, the center was emptied and sanitized, but its conference business had dropped to zero. It reopened to the public only a few weeks ago. D and I were desperate to get away from our same daily rooms, and reserved a night. That week the wildfires blazed up, and the Air Quality in Pacific Grove was rated Hazardous. We rescheduled. Two weeks later the fires were contained, the air had cleared and we were on our way.
Usually the Conference Center is humming with conferees, who might include quilters, nutritionists, corporate retreaters, and many other groups. But there are usually a few unfilled rooms which are available at reasonable cost to the non-conferring public at the last minute. If you have breakfast in the Dining Hall you will sit at whatever table is not filled, and be liable to have an interesting conversations with whatever genial strangers share the table. The Lodge is full of teenagers waiting their turn at the pool table or conferees scanning brochures about local activities, or picking up souvenirs at the Park Store.
But that was Before.
As we drove in, the parking lots were nearly empty. The lodge itself was posted with the first of many signs notifying visitors of curtailed services. “Lodge open for check-in from 2PM to 8PM.” It was 3PM, so we entered . The cavernous lodge was empty except for the young lady at the reception desk and one computer jockey at a well-isolated table. The room was posted with signs saying “[fill in blank] is not available to guests at this time.” (e.g. swimming pool, lodge fireplace, park store, pool table, piano…). The brochure stand was empty, but we invited to hold up your phones to a QRcode to download information. The Dining Room was closed also, as were the bike rentals.
All the same, it was a wonderful getaway. We could sit on our balcony among the cypress trees and look out to a sparkling ocean. And when we walked down to the beach, we saw that there are some family pleasures that even COVID-19 cannot close down.
So we had a family reunion, properly distanced. The campers set up their tents in the yard (separate tents, properly distanced) and set off for a 16-mile hike which included a fair segment of asphalt and sidewalks, summited the local peak (Elevation, 2,812 ft) and a stop at a local pub able to serve a cold beer with outside seating.
I’m just beginning to feel some fraying in the social fabric. My son refused to get together for a mid-point picnic between our homes, as his son and daughter had recently traveled and he couldn’t guarantee they weren’t infectious. For the same reason my other son canceled a planned joint camping trip with his brother’s family – an infection in his four-room apartment would be a disaster, and he couldn’t risk it. Still not “serious”, no-one is ill, but when families are afraid to meet, that’s wrenching.
Years ago, my father used to say “Everything I know about life I learned from Tarzan of the Apes.” Although some tattered Tarzan paperbacks were around the house, somehow I never got around to reading them, though my kid sister read the series avidly. Some time back I mentioned this family story to my husband, and as a gag gift at Christmas he gave me the first four books of the series. They sat on my bookshelf untouched until four months into lockdown. With all libraries closed and the neighborhood Little Free Libraries exhausted, I turned in desperation to the Lord of the Jungle for escape.
Of course, we couldn’t leave it there. The second volume, The Return of Tarzan, sees Tarzan transformed into a 1912 version of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher: handsome, well-spoken, without ties, and able to fend off an adoring female or fight off a dozen malefactors without suffering a scratch. I’m about half-way through this volume, but I’m pretty sure that Tarzan’s true love Jane Porter will end up in his arms by the end. After all, I still have Son of Tarzan and Tarzan the Untamed waiting on the shelf, and I’m pretty sure Tarzan didn’t get it on with any of the apes.
I read the disheartening news articles at the end of May about the George Floyd protests gone awry. I read about looters standing with crowbars at the ready as peaceful protesters marched down the streets of San Francisco and Oakland . They were waiting for the right moment to turn and smash a window for plunder. I read about rubber bullets and tear gas and arson and professional criminals driving up in vans to strip computer shops and appliance stores of their goods.
Allyson Johnson 