California State Route 84 is where I found myself. Growing up my Dad told me stories about driving up and down 84’s winding mountain roads, up to Alice’s Restaurant, through La Honda, and down to San Gregorio and ultimately, to the pacific ocean. He said those drives were his escape from the chaos of his home life. When his records and stereo weren’t enough to drown out the sound of my Grandparent’s screaming, he got in his car and he drove 84.

Many decades later, my dad taught me to drive on 84. Instead of taking me to a parking lot or a quiet neighborhood, he thought a two lane mountain road with a steep cliff on one side was the best place for me to learn. Not only did I have to learn very quickly, but I got to spend quality time with my Dad that I had seldom gotten in the past. So suddenly we were driving quite literally down his memory lane. Winding up the mountain he told me about how he would listen to “Ten Years Gone” by Led Zeppelin on his drives as a teenager, a song he had shown me when I was young and I had grown to love as he did. As we got up to La Honda he warned me to never go to the historic and notorious bar and Hell’s Angels hang out, Applejack’s, unless “I wanted to get beat up” (of course I went the moment I had an ID that said I was 21). He pointed as we passed Bear Gulch Road, where Neil Young’s Broken Arrow Ranch was located. As we did more of these drives, I learned more about my Dad’s tumultuous childhood and also the history of the place I grew up in. I started to understand my family more, and my connection to the place I was raised. 

As soon as I had my license, the first thing I did was get as many friends as I could fit in the Prius I shared with my sister and drive 84 to the beach. We’d bring a bag of liquor and who knows what else out to the beach and spend the day eating burritos from the Pescadero gas station and getting a little too drunk on those often foggy and cold beaches. Sometimes we’d make our way deep into the mountains and find a place to watch the sunset, or just watch the lights of the Bay Area glimmer below. 84 was where we could go to feel some sort of freedom, it was romantic up in those mountains and down on the coast, seemingly untouched by the hustle and bustle of the Bay Area and the plague of tech money and redevelopment. Redwoods stand tall, buildings remain the same from the midcentury or even much earlier. There is a whisper of the old Bay Area and the counter culture dream in those mountains still. It enchanted my teenage self, it was my escape from a life I was steadily becoming more unhappy with.

Suddenly I found myself, alone, late at night, early in the morning, anytime, driving 84, listening to the music my Dad had showed me. It was my escape, it was my refuge. The redwoods, the rolling hills, and the ocean always seemed to ground me, to heal me, to take me back to myself. Sixteen to nineteen were tumultuous and challenging years of my life and it only felt natural to try to ease my mind the same way my dad had 40 years earlier. It was undeniably powerful. That road had helped guide him and I was letting it guide me too. Suddenly I understood why those mountains had enchanted Neil, Ken Kesey, Joan Baez, and the many others who had made it their home. Their music and writing made more sense, connected with me more deeply.

While I was passionate about music and practicing guitar, I was never a great student. With dyslexia, school was always an uphill battle, especially in such a highly competitive environment like the Bay Area. Other factors and pressures in my life grew a deep sadness within myself, that in some ways, I’m still trying to get to the bottom of to this day. Alcohol was an instant anxiety relief for me and it was also a way for me to be accepted and liked by the people around me. Ultimately I just wanted to be loved and accepted and being the girl who always had a bottle helped greatly with that, or at least I thought. It’s a miracle I never got more hurt. Driving those roads now, many years sober, I don’t know how I ever did it drunk or high. Every couple years there are a few teenagers that lose their lives up on those mountain roads, racing their cars, drinking, chasing all the same things I was. I’m so lucky to be alive, to have made it through those years I felt so alone, so misunderstood. Spending time with my Dad, alone with myself, partying with friends, it all helped guide me to my path. I fell in love in those mountains, with the music I knew I wanted to make and the person I knew I wanted to be. 

My family has lived in California for generations and for the most part, no one’s really ever left. Moving to Oregon at 19, and Tennessee at 25, felt radical to me. My mountains and coastline I love so dearly are so far out of reach. There are no familiar roads to drive at night, there is no family close by, each time I moved all I had was myself. When the darkness creeps back in and my hold on myself loosens, I think of that mountain road, of the faint smell of the ocean from the fog slowly inching down the coastal range like a tidal wave. I remember who I wanted to be, and who I’ve worked so hard to become. That is the road back to myself, I can always go home, even if I can’t drive three days straight west or take a four hour flight, home is both that land and the person I discovered on it, and that is within me always. Even when I’ve seemed to have lost all contact with her, I’ve found my way back each time. 

When I wrote “Wayfaring Woman” sitting on my floor in Oregon with tears in my eyes, feeling a million miles away from myself, I was reminding myself that even though I felt lost, I knew my way home.

Mac Cornish, by Mandi Fountain