Hillsides branded by burn scars greeted my husband, Eddie, and I as we descended into Carmel Valley. Like us, these Santa Lucia Mountains had also suffered in the past year. Blackened fingers of fire had sliced through the highest peaks. Oaks presented gnarled leafless limbs. Few wildflowers dotted the roadside meadows. Overgrown dry grasses swayed in the warm winter breeze. Were we wrong to think what was once our favorite escape could help us reconnect?
Like most parents, we hadn’t gone away without our kids since the pandemic began. Even our 13- and 9-year-old sons could see it was affecting our relationship. So, after my parents got their second vaccine shots and agreed to watch the boys, Eddie and I decided to return to Carmel Valley. Through a bit of research, I found that our favorite splurge, Bernardus Lodge, was implementing strict mask mandates and cleaning practices and had hospital-grade air purifiers in public spaces.
Over our 21-year relationship, this rustic Monterey County hamlet has often hugged us back to each other, I hoped that after a year of playing cards on pillows, Zoom cooking classes and too many movie nights, we could find a map to being more than housemates, co-parents, cover-stealers.
I did as I always do on road trips and read aloud as Eddie weaved into the valley floor. We’d been reading Yuval Noah Harari’s "Homo Deus" for months and still hadn’t gotten through the introduction. I looked out my window at a ribbon of road we’d traversed so many times, wondering how Harari’s concept of understanding our shared past could help us shape our future. Could the log cabin with the s’mores kits where we’d stayed when the kids were small, the pizza café with the good beer, the winery that sparked our affection for chardonnay reinvigorate our relationship against the strains of lockdown?
Place had long featured in how Eddie and I connected, I thought as we passed the wine cave where a friend once crooned a cappella Prince songs. “We should go back there,” I whispered. But where exactly I meant, I wasn’t quite sure. Was it sipping wine and singing with strangers? Or how free we felt in that candlelit cave so many years ago when Eddie wrapped his arms around my waist and swayed to the melody of "Adore"? Was it the former us, before this year of being sheltered in place? Or the future post-pandemic us now embarking on this familiar terrain with quarantined eyes?
In Carmel Valley Village, a fold in a two-lane highway, dotted with tasting rooms and busy cafes, it appeared the post-pandemic future had already arrived. Extended families held court in outdoor tasting rooms, each group with their own little garden nook to laugh loudly over bottles of pinot. Couples in wide-brimmed hats and linen pants lingered at cafes’ outdoor tables. A mom pushed her son on the swings at the elementary school playground.
“This feels weirdly normal,” I said, after we’d ordered salad and pizza at Corkscrew Cafe and the waiter motioned us toward the garden. We found an antique table by the koi pond and Eddie poured us two glasses of bubbly. Shaded by the massive cork oak, under the strung lights, it seemed like we’d just woken from hibernation.
There was such limited time to explore. Not just Bernardus Lodge, I thought, when we arrived later that day, but this world, ourselves, each other. To choose to share a life with someone means being present, giving and receiving, noticing. All the times we’ve wandered through this property in the past, we’ve received such joy — even now, I smile thinking of when my teenager was a toddler and ran across the bocce court in a Hawaiian shirt; or how Eddie and I soaked in the hot tub one afternoon watching a pair of hawks soar overhead.
Yet true relationships — with people and place — require us to give more than we receive.
“Let’s go in the hot tub,” I offered, knowing how much my Eastern European husband appreciates a good soak. Unfortunately, another couple had the same idea, and the property’s pandemic protocols allowed only one group in the jacuzzi at a time. These restrictions might be an inconvenience to some, but they made me feel safer. It was as if the property was not only looking out for my health, but reminding me to focus on the person I was with.
Like we’d learned to do so well this year, Eddie and I pivoted. We found a table under a tent, drank wine, and discussed how different we felt in this public place. Every once in a while, a server penetrated our little bubble, attending to our needs by delivering oysters and filling up our glasses. But now, instead of them just taking care of us, we put our masks on in gratitude.
At Lucia, chef Cal Stamenov’s flagship restaurant, Eddie offered me choice bites of salad harvested from the hotel’s garden. Such a simple gesture of love was something we’d rarely done since the pandemic began. In our wedding vows, we claimed that love meant expecting nothing else in return for kindnesses, yet this year we’d been so obsessed with our own survival we’d neglected each other. I pushed the last bits of crab toward Eddie, hoping he understood my gesture.
Eddie wanted to take the resort’s house Mercedes for a drive the next morning. I preferred to hike but didn’t want to stop him from this once-in-a-lifetime chance to drive a dreamy car. The machine hugged the road, passing places on which we constructed our history — Carmel village, Point Lobos, Garrapata Beach, Bixby Bridge. Too soon, we were forced to turn around. Highway 1 had been sliced open. At Big Sur, the road had fallen into the turbulent sea below, stopping traffic, and us, from business as usual.
Our lives had also been halted this year. And yet, this pause has allowed us to notice who, and what, remains. Like these cliffs, our relationships might erode. But Harari is onto something: History’s roots can help stabilize.
Eddie pressed on the brakes in front of a blooming acacia he’d heard me gushing over. “Let’s go on a walk,” he said, leading the way into Garland Ranch Regional Park. We crossed the trickling stream to access the Lupine Loop trail. Wildflowers drew life from the soil. Fresh buds bloomed on the madrones. A cold wind wrote across the treetops. Eddie reached for my hand and pulled me in. With all the uncertainties on this planet, the future felt brighter being embraced by these mountains and this man.
Michele Bigley is a freelance writer who’s currently writing a book about her family’s global journey to find climate solutions. Follow their adventures: michelebigley.substack.com
