"I got to thinking more and more about the mountains as I drove south along the coast road. They're big here, right on the ocean, big and endless. You can drive through them for hours and the picture's always the same - a steep rocky wall rising up on one side of you, and a sharp, sudden drop, falling away on the other - and far below that, is the Pacific Ocean, foaming in through the shoals like angry quicksilver and spraying itself up the cliff side. 

We'd just come around a curve and started downhill, when I noticed that the steering wheel was tugging to the left..."