San Luis Obispo County and Santa Barbara County appear and disappear on the drive across California State Route 166.
The road winds through the Cuyama Valley in serpentine coils. Most of the time San Luis Obispo County lies to the north and Santa Barbara County to the south.
Whenever her parents took them for a drive along 166, she watched for signs and sang out the name of the county they entered. She also watched the land and realized the road ignored man’s boundaries and followed nature’s.
She wondered about the surveyors of another century, what kind of people they were and how they arranged for the two counties to trade land back and forth during the 1850s.
She had a lot to think about.
The summer days were full and passed slowly.
After dinner she didn’t play Parchesi with her brother much anymore. As soon as it was dark, he headed off with a pair of binoculars to explore the stars. She didn’t share his interest but she liked to go with him.
He would nap throughout the day, watch stars by night and go to sleep just before sunrise in a spot on the plain where he had found a dip in the ground that fit his body.
She usually stuck around for a few minutes, lying nearby in the rounded crevice which the grass made soft.
He tried to be good about sharing the pair of binoculars but she didn’t mind looking up into the sky. All she could hear was the rustle of grass and the occasional creak of brittle branches from the nearby blue oak.
The first few times she went out with him, she hoped something would happen to break the spell of the darkness. Then she figured there wasn’t anything else that would be as good as this.
Maybe someday, when she needed something, she would come back here.
Maybe darkness was the best place to be when you started to hope for something.
Down below she heard a slow truck grinding west on California State Route 166 toward San Luis Obispo County.
