The road to Jalama Beach curves through the hills, covered in a green velvet throw tossed casually aside by some giant hand, down through the oaks and eucalyptus windbreaks, to the sea. The hills should be losing their green this late in the year, but owing to months of rain, the flowers still bloom and the grass waves tall and unmowed along the pitted asphalt road. The Keelhauler and I are running late, and I'm driving carefully along the unfamiliar road, down toward the beach to meet my friend Constance and her friend Harry, our official ticket to Cojo Ranch. Harry's 93, and retired from the ranch for thirty years or so, but still likes to get out there when he can.

I drove into the parking lot, pausing for guys in wetsuits, girls in ruffled flip skirts shuffling in flip flops and licking ice cream cones, kids on skateboards. We found a parking spot and waved to Constance, standing at the far end, near a line of shining classic cars. I waited for her to introduce us to the sun-beaten man in jeans standing next to her, assuming he was Harry. She said, "Here, let me introduce you to Harry," and led us to a small, aged man with a kind face, wearing a checked shirt and sitting at a nearby table. He had a strong handshake, and a quiet, folksy manner, and I marveled at him--he is the oldest person I've ever met, and I wanted to watch him. "Pleased to know ya!" said Harry, with a nod and a smile.

The Keelhauler and Constance helped Harry into the car, and he laughed when he got settled, and said, "Well, I made it!" The Keelhauler answered, "The hard part's getting out!" and he laughed genially. We started on our way, up the hill out of Jalama Beach, to the private road that leads to the locked gate that leads to the gorgeous expanse known as Cojo Ranch.

There are seven locks on the gate, and armed with the combination, the Keelhauler swung it open and we progressed inside, following the long, uneven road to Point Conception. "Shoulda seen this road before it was paved," Harry offered from the front seat. "Oh, we tried to keep it in order... had eight head of horses on the grader..." he trailed off. Harry worked the ranch for 47 years, grading roads and mowing hay and breaking horses. The grounds look wild to me, alive with fox tails and flowers, rolling hills of oak trees. We came upon a stand of eucalyptus. "Those trees are new," said Harry. The trees were fifty feet high.

We had an escort to the Point Conception lighthouse, Carrie. She met us on the road, going the opposite direction, and stopped, rolling down her window. "That Harry?" she asked, and we affirmed. "I'm sposed to meet you," she said, because the Coast Guard had ruled that no visitors go unescorted to the lighthouse. We followed her Saturn until the potholes in the road became too hazardous for Constance. Carrie drove right through, navigating like a captain, but Constance stopped near the old lighthouse keeper's house, and we walked the rest of the way. I'd seen the house a week before, when the Keelhauler and I took the train up the coast, but now I was up close and realized it was abandoned, the windows broken. In the road, a rusted-out wreck of a car languished.

At the top of the hill was a shed with an enormous radar antenna, and a warning, "Emissions at this location may exceed FCC standards for human levels..." I stopped reading, kept moving toward a high retaining wall at the edge of the paved area. Looking over the wall, I held my breath, because I wanted to scream, or laugh, or maybe jump over it--I looked down at Point Conception, at the wild surf sending spray crashing onto the rocks, turkey vultures hovering, seals silhouetted in the waves, and many wooden steps leading down a steep cliff covered in ice plant, down to a stout, elegant lighthouse far below.

"Can I go down the stairs?" I asked Carrie, and her spotted fur earmuffs bobbed a Yes. The steps were steep and precarious, a splintered handrail the only guide. The wind howled. "Thirty-five," I said to the Keelhauler, meaning knots. He shrugged it off, "MAYBE twenty," he said. "FORTY," I insisted, knowing I was overstating, but it felt like forty, it felt like fifty maybe, as I stepped carefully down those high plank steps to the lighthouse below, around ice plant and darting lizards and drifts of sand. There is no shelter at Point Conception, the place where the Alaskan currents meet the California currents in a tenuous and constant tango.

Carrie accompanied us to the lighthouse, and stood placidly by as I raved, astounded by the structure, its location at the seeming end of the world, at the violent surf below. The lighthouse was built in 1881 and manages a certain delicacy in addition to its stolid, stubborn blockiness. An artful hand designed the copper roof atop the light tower, stopping short of whimsy, but acceding to a ball finial at its terminus.

The point itself lies well below the lighthouse, and there is no way to reach it. The Keelhauler and I went out as far as we could--out to the concrete pad where the foghorn stands, a tall metal structure alone in the remnants of a building long gone. When the foghorn sounds, it is deafening, and from ten feet away, the concrete vibrated under my feet. The Keelhauler ran up and touched the foghorn, but the wind was so strong I was afraid to go further out. I screamed and covered my ears, laughing, when the foghorn sounded again, afraid to touch it as if it were a living thing.

We climbed the 157 steps or so--I can't remember, but Carrie knew the number--back to the top of the hill where Harry and Constance had remained. Harry sat in the lee of the retaining wall, his collar up, winning the award for Good Sport of the Year. We all looked out to the horizon, to the startling expanse of blue haze at the end of the continent, and Harry said, "It sure was pretty when all those other buildings were there." We looked down at the concrete footprint of the ruins, and nodded in silent agreement, trying to imagine it.

Star of the day. . .Stanley Kubrick