Top down. Sun on your face. Twenty-seven miles of Pacific Coast Highway and nowhere you need to be. The ocean is right there, close enough to touch, and the mountains are rising up on your right. You've thought about this drive
your whole life.
What catches you off guard is the smell. California's wind blows from the east, off the land, down through the canyons. So the air hitting you on PCH isn't just ocean. It's the hillsides. Dry wood and sage and something sweeter underneath — star jasmine, growing wild up in the canyon, carried all the way down to the highway. You don't see it. You just smell it, suddenly, all around you. And for a second you forget everything else.
MALIBU is that second.