Monterey moments: Reflections from my Coasts and Climate Semester
When dawn broke over the Santa Lucia Mountains, I could hear the waves breaking against the cliffs of the Big Sur coastline as the stars began to fade away. As the sun started to bring pastels to the sky, bringing out the mountains’ contours, I sat up on my sleeping pad to be confronted by the vastness of the dark blue Pacific. The weather held, revealing a welcome sight of sun in between the season’s atmospheric rivers that rendered most of Big Sur inaccessible through the semester. My classmate and I were the only people on the trail that day. Our trip took us through the low brush and wildflowers that littered open hillsides and across the path of a bobcat on the prowl. It was a 40-minute drive back to campus, just in time to catch the Sunday pickup soccer game at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS).