Up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t know what Big Sur was. I knew it was a place. And I knew it was a nice place because whenever it came up in conversation everyone half-closed their eyes and sighed and said “oh mmm Big Sur, gorgeous.” And then, since it was too late to ask for clarification (is it a park? a mountain? a beach? a taco joint?), I would follow along. “Oh mmm Big Sur, gorgeous.”

After living an hour from this mysterious place for three months, I finally asked the Internet. What the hell is Big Sur? Turns out Big Sur is the 90 mile stretch of coastline between Carmel and San Luis Obispo. And my guesses weren’t so far off, after all. There are five or six different state parks in Big Sur and there are both mountains (the Santa Lucia range) and beaches (90 miles of coast line, remember?). And there are probably at least a few taco joints since this is California we are talking about.

And now I’ve been there, and all I want to say is ohmmmwowbigsursogorgeous. But I’m a writer, so I have to at least try. Big Sur is, despite everything I just told you, not a region. It’s an experience. It’s standing on the edge of the highway and feeling like the ground is about to drop out from underneath your feet (which, in fact, is exactly what it is going to do). Big Sur is vistas and colors and textures that sap your powers of articulation and leave you feeling very small, very small indeed. Big Sur is realizing that up until this point in your life you had never, really, ever truly understood the color blue.

Big Sur is the delicate play of sea foam filling the crevices of your footprints and the thunderous concerto of California’s largest waves. It is the frightening marriage of great power and fragile beauty. It is the tiny, waving tendrils of green sea anemones clinging to battle-scarred, wave-beaten cliffs. It is riptides and flawless skies and signs that say that say “no swimming, conditions deadly.”

Big Sur is the dizzying feeling of looking up at trees that are taller than any of the buildings in your hometown and realizing that while you weren’t alive for The Beatles or Watergate or neon being cool, these trees saw the signing of the Magna Carta. The flipping Magna Carta. Do you even know how long ago that was? (Hint, it was 1215.) Sometimes I think I’m cool for remembering VHS tapes, but back when these trees were saplings, people were talking about this cool new thing called buttons.

Big Sur is perspective. These trees and cliffs and currents were here when Mexico won independence from Spain and claimed California as its own. The Mexicans called this harsh, uninhabitable coast line El Grande Sur. The great south. It was the big, blank spot on their map, the equivalent of America’s Wild West. The name, or rather, half of it, stuck. The Big South. Big Sur. Half English, half Spanish. Half mountain, half ocean. Half unfathomable beauty, half sublime power. It is, I think, the perfect name for this landscape that no one seems to know how to talk about.

So what is Big Sur? I have no idea, but oh man, mmm gorgeous.