Morro Bay
First Visit
When I first came to Morro Bay, I was a soon-to-be college student. It was the summer of 2017, and I had committed to attending Cal Poly before knowing anything about the school or town. I got no’s from most of the schools I applied to but a yes from this one, so it was an easy decision.
Orientation happened that July, and my mother and I made the road trip down, excited to see the place I would soon be living—both subconsciously deciding to continue the non-research, and just follow the map. I was the first of my siblings to move out, so everything about the experience was fresh and strange.
Morro Bay was a quirky fishing town we’d heard about just 15 minutes from the school, and we decided to have a late dinner there on our first night. I remember stepping out of the car around 9pm outside the restaurant. Street lights were sparse and it was dark, boats were docked in the harbor behind the restaurant, still as the night around them.
The place was almost void of human noise. We could hear the long note of a foghorn and seals barking, but it was too dark to see them. Looking up, the sky was gone behind dark gray fog, and a firey tint shone overhead. Looking longer I realized it was coming from three massive cement pillars—stacks from an inactive power plant. The top half of the towers disappeared into the marine layer and red lights blinked up there, muffled as if under a blanket.
I was shocked at the temperature in July, coming from a town where summer nights meant fans propped by open-windows, or night swimming just before bed. My mother and I were the only two people at the restaurant besides the servers. We laughed over burgers and fries about the something in the air, we’ll call it the weirdness, the 1980s wallpaper trim, green carpet, painted wood chairs. Fishermen lore printed on the back of the menu, the hum of the foghorn again.
This is an ode to Morro Bay, the town I lived close to for four years, and in for the last two. And a celebration that no two towns are the same.
Community
Unbeknownst to me that night, there were people my age around town. Artists of many forms—people I would come to know and love dearly, and be consistently inspired by.
Conversating, learning, sharing good food and wine, spinning records, singing and dancing, diving into the freezing ocean at odd hours of the night or morning, making Morro home. There is a particular style on this stretch of coast reminiscent of old California—abundant with empty coves and freedom.
The Rock—Native Relationship
Perhaps the most dramatic symbol of a place I have ever witnessed: Morro Rock, stands 576 feet high, seen from many miles all around. It towers over the town as soon as you make the turn around Hollister peak on highway one.
Its immense presence seems to call in fog like a magnet, sometimes letting it spill over and around it with soft white streaks, and when the fog is gone it stands starkly against blue sky, all of its grooves and glory for the world.
Morro rock and 13 other geologically similar sites are volcanic plugs, lava domes, and sheet-like intrusions that stretch from the West coast of California to further inland, likely following an ancient fault.
The rock looks just so climbable, and that if you were to reach the top, you would stand on a holy mountain—feeling the peace it keeps in the land as it plugs the immense volcano beneath the earth. You would see the big blue horizon as a bird does, knowing the future temperament of the swell, what whales, sharks, seals, otters, and peregrine falcons might be around.
The reality is, if you are not of Native Chumash or Salinan descent, you may not legally step foot on Morro Rock. It is a secret view, one reserved for people with a lineage here that dates back thousands of years before European contact. It is named Lisamu by the Northern Chumash people, and it is sacred to them. The Chumash choose not to climb it, believing that to climb the rock is to desecrate its sacredness, and that it should never be climbed. For spiritual ceremonies and prayer, they congregate at its base. The site is sacred for the Salinans too, but they choose to have their summer and winter solstice ceremonies at the top—this has been a legal conflict between the tribes for decades.
There is a Salinan legend that Morro Rock is where Falcon and Raven defeated the terrible two-headed serpent-monster named Taliyekatapelta. One day, wing and wing, Falcon and Raven decided to hunt down and kill Taliyekatapelta. They found the monster somewhere inland, but it was more powerful than they had expected. Falcon and Raven fled from him toward Morro Rock, where Raven’s powers were derived, but Taliyekatapelta gained on them. The serpent encircled Morro Rock and began to climb up in pursuit of Falcon and Raven. But as it approached, Falcon and Raven took out their knives, and when Taliyekatapelta was close enough, they hacked him to pieces, but he did not die. The pieces of him became the snakes we see across the region.
Changes
Rows of 4-cornered houses and flat roofs, gray paint and small, neat lawns. The funny old houses are becoming surrounded by buildings like these, new ones appear every year. But the presence and remnants of Native American history is within the town, despite new boxy looking modern beach houses rising up all the time.
A hobby for some locals after the winter flooding was looking for arrowheads. The storms filled the creeks and broke them loose, churning up history from the deep earth. A friend of mine found 6 whole arrowheads and eight halves in a span of a few weeks this last January. The arrowheads are a physical marker of a simply regenerative, harmonious way of life. A whisper from people who cared for the land of their ancestors for thousands of years.
I’ve only met one person of Chumash descent in the years I’ve lived here, and he was deaf. I used to see him every time I surfed the rock. He rode a yellow longboard and had silver braids, he was stoic, focused, straight-faced. As a new body the lineup I was intimidated by most locals, and I craved their acceptance. I never knew his name or anything about him, we only nodded to one another once. I haven’t seen him since before the pandemic and wonder, does anyone know where he’s been?
History
In 1542 when the Spanish came, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo named it “el Morro,” which meant crown-shaped hill. In the late 1800s, settlers saw fit to create a jetty, a causeway (land connecting the rock to the beach), and a bay for boats, and to do so they blew up parts of the rock to use its material. It wasn’t until 1968 that defacing of the rock became illegal. Before all of this building, it was an island. (Photos at bottom for comparison)
Substitute Teaching
Morro Bay High School is sandwiched between two kinds of white noise. One is the whizzing of cars on the highway, and the other is the sound of rumbling waves from the beach. For a year and a half I’ve been substitute teaching there, and I’ve learned the way of the school.
At first it felt like a fake school. Students seemed to wander the grounds as they pleased and leave when they wanted to. But I soon learned the function of the looseness. For the better part of the school year, kids do the work they are supposed to. As the year fades out so does the strictness, and there is a thread of trust between the staff and most students. I’ve never seen a high school so close to the ocean. Marine bio “field trips” are a short walk away.
I laughed with co-workers over lunch about something a student said: “I’ve heard the sun can kill you, but I don’t think it can. The only things that can really kill you are hungry predators and death.”
“Good morning,” said Matteo, a chubby kindergartener at the elementary school with big dark eyes and gelled hair. He sat on his right spot in the room, crisscross applesauce and folded his hands. His classmates ran a muck in circles around him. One kid threw a fake banana right past him, but he still looked right at me. I will never forget Matteo.
Community II
Some of my closest friends were born here and chose to stay. The surfing is good for those who thrive on change and exploring. Waves are scarcely good in the same place for more than a single morning’s tide. Surfers here have spent cumulative hours studying exactly what must align at a given surf spot to make the magic happen. Even then, we can’t always be sure. The water is cold year-round, and without a hood you could be asking for a headache. A few years ago on a bigger day, I lost my board too many times and on top of the brain freeze, my friend’s dad nicknamed me “the swimmer.”
I know two people personally (including said dad) who were attacked by sharks just south in Los Osos. They lived to tell the tale, and legend has it, they still surf there. To my grandmothers and mom, don’t worry, I never surf in that place
A friend of mine, whose presence in the community is of a hometown hero essence with his admired surfing style and friendly open door, checks on an old man named Brother Frog who lives on a boat alone, to make sure he’s still doing ok. He’s been looking out for Brother Frog since he was a teenager, helping sell his trademark hand-painted T-shirts.
Orienting Myself
Sometimes I get imposter syndrome calling this place home. It certainly feels like home, though. I keep going back in that frigid water.
On the last summer solstice, the marine layer finally broke, and we celebrated the longest day of the year surfing in bathing suits. I savored the sun from head to toe, and the next day it was cold again. In December, I surfed at night and saw the stars disappear and felt midnight rain in the pitch black ocean. In February, I saw snow on the mountains over Cayucos.
I’ve seen miles of white sand along “Morro Strand” completely bare, and then full of hats on heads and colored umbrellas, tents and towels and dogs and children on holiday weekends. The smell of sunscreen floating around. I’ve watched the beach in foggy gloom, empty except for an elderly couple, holding hands and following their dog into the gray just above the high tide line, disappearing like ghosts. I almost thought they might have been.
I’ve seen the thrashing violence of storm in the ocean, writhing in frigid fervor, colorless waves consuming each other from every direction, you can still hear the action with all the windows closed. And days later a sheet of blue glass—sheen like a mirror, finally at rest and saying: now what was all that drama? Arcing backs from a pod of passing dolphins probe the smooth surface. They follow each other in a line, traveling quietly. They are going south, leaving the drama behind.
Surfing photo by Julia Schwebel, others by Red Truhitte