Walking to Patagonia by Henry P. Kramer

        Day after day it was blue sky and bright sun sparkling on the gentle waves at the beach in Santa Barbara. Those were the days when everyone was free and becoming even freer. Everyone was dreaming extravagant dreams, searching for the ultimate, and we were all trying to find ourselves.
        Every day at noon I would change clothes at the bathhouse, jog the mile and a half to the Biltmore pier, turn around, and stop half way back to take a swim with my friends. There was a group of regulars including old Sam, Jane, and little Diane who was the only native Californian. Sam was originally from Ohio and Jane from Boston.
        Sam, a thin, wizened, sun-browned man at ninety-seven went swimming nude in the briskly invigorating surf every day. He enjoyed the cold water and the vigorous thrashing in the waves, although his main purpose was to be active so he would stay alive until the year two thousand, the start of the Jubilee Millennium. From reading his sect's interpretation of the Bible, he knew that each millennium since the Creation was equivalent to one of the Seven Days of Creation of Genesis. From counting the "begats" in the Bible it is known to the sages of his sect that the Lord created the world some six thousand years ago. So the year two thousand is the start of the Jubilee, the equivalent of the cosmic day of rest when peace and plenty shall be provided by the Lord who will bless all by coming back to Earth and bestowing his shining presence on mankind.
        Sam was not discouraged by the occasional facial melanomas that had to be removed and were due to overexposure to the sun., nor by the automobile accident he suffered due to deteriorating vision. As time went on, Sam became weaker but still insisted on his daily swim in the surf. When the sea was rough, Jane would help Sam through the surf.
        Sam's real setback came when he was arrested for public nudity on the beach and he gave the Judge his word of honor that he would not repeat the offense. Sam could not break his word of honor, but broke instead the rhythm of his life. In lieu of basking in the glory of the Lord on Earth anno domini two-thousand, he joined his Maker in Heaven in 1976.
        Diane followed the dream of perpetual summer on the beach, forever on to Patagonia. All mankind would shed its pretenses and confining habits just like Diane shed her clothes. Diane was young and beautiful. She would cavort in the surf like a seal. Drops of saltwater would drip from her blond hair when she emerged from the sea and would dry on her lovely, firm brown body. Diane dreamed of the brotherhood of man. To show her love for all of mankind she united her life with that of Elbert, a tall, strong, black youth who had had a bit of bad luck that caused him to lose some of his front teeth and spend time in jail.
        Diane and Elbert constructed a hut of palm fronds on the beach and lived in it like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They gathered their food not from the trees but selected it from the abundance of the garbage bins in the back of the supermarkets. God watched over Diane and Elbert blessed their union on the beach with fertility.
        In anticipation of the coming blessing, Diane's dream took form and purpose. It's embodiment was Patagonia. Diane had seen a map of the Western World. The rim of the Western World, bathed in the golden light of the sun at noon and the blood red of the setting sun in the late afternoon, stretches from California, through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, to Tierra del Fuego in Patagonia at the very tip of the Western World. Diane imagined palm trees and tropical fruit trees lining white shores, crashing surf, seals and walruses playing in the sea and sunning themselves on the rocks among the pelicans and herons.. She thought of sun-filled days of happiness and sweet nights of love and thousands of miles of beauty.
        Diane had envisioned that she and Elbert and their baby would walk along the beach from Santa Barbara to Patagonia. This was the dream and this would be the life: the sun, the ocean, and the gifts of God and the kindness of man to sustain them. After all, the early Americans had walked from Siberia across the Aleutians down through the Yukon, through the verdant valleys between the glaciers, and ever south until they had reached Patagonia. Everything was possible for those that dreamed.
        I lost track of Diane after she and Elbert started on their trek. Sometime later I ran into Jane and asked her for news of Diane. Diane and Elbert had walked all the way down to Ventura, thirty miles along the shore towards Patagonia. After the baby came, Elbert had found a job in a lumber mill in a small town in Northern California. Jane said that Diane, Elbert and the baby were getting along alright.
        And, you ask, what was my dream? Well, I guess I was living the dream every day. But by now I only have the vaguest recollection of it and couldn't really tell you what it was all about.