Slurping up another salty, briny oyster I’d just wrangled out of its shell at the close of a long day, I leaned back to admire the sunset over Tomales Bay. With a cooler, a couple lemons and a dangerous-looking steel oyster shucker, my friends and I made a picnic on a windy strip of beach just outside of Hog Island Oyster Co.

This was where, at the end of what proved a blistering semester, I found myself. As far away from any stress as I could be, lost in the land of oyster farmers and dairies just north of the city.

As it turns out, California’s oyster industry represents the oldest aquaculture industry in the entire Western United States. Requiring pure, uncontaminated water to thrive, oysters act as the “canaries of the sea,” their condition and success intimately tied to the water in which they make their home. Tomales Bay, just about an hour’s drive from Berkeley, remains one of the preeminent locations for oyster cultivation. There, you can buy oysters by the dozen straight from the farmers — picnic tables, hot sauce and shuckers provided.

The landscape surrounding us has always offered me a way of understanding my place in this town. Freshman year, I would escape to the hills, taking up running for pleasure for the first time. Berkeley’s fast-paced, urban spaces overwhelmed me, but the freedom and expanse I found on the fire trails became my haven. From there I mused as to where I would explore next — Oakland, San Francisco, out to Marin and beyond.

Little could I have seen from there, though, the fishermen hauling out from ramshackle docks dotting the coastline of Point Reyes. Little did I know that, as I ran, sweating, through the misty trees, someone just a little while away hauled oyster cages to shore to sell to hungry customers. To them, this was a way life — one I’d never stopped to consider.

My friends and I had picked up two dozen oysters and a bag of ice at the Hog’s Island depot and taken off down the coast, scouring the land for a spot in the sun. On a sunlit peninsula called Millerton Point, we turned in. Lugging our oysters, chips, beer and a beach towel we headed for a secluded cove. We spread a blanket and settled down to the task of prying open oysters. In clumsy, thick gloves, we laughed. We spilled their salty brine all over our legs, and finally slurped the best, most well-earned oysters of our lives.

Wading in the bay, my girlfriend Charlie, who I met whilst studying abroad in London, flung shattered oyster shells into the bay. “You must have found the UK so small,” she said. “I cannot comprehend the scale of this place.”

The San Francisco Bay covers 1,600 square miles and, according to the US Census, was home to 7.15 million people in 2010. Getting out and away from Berkeley to explore seems like an effort. Yet the brilliant part of living here is that adventure is just at your fingertips. There are waterfalls just behind the Berkeley rose gardens, tunnels underneath campus, an art history department bathroom with clear views of the Golden Gate.

At some point between the dread of dead week and the fear of finals, I remember straightening my aching neck to look out of the library window, wondering, “Where the hell am I?”

After a semester of losing myself, this column is an attempt to locate myself, a record of this summer of self-discovery, self care and exploration into the beautiful Bay Area.

Generally, I get the sense we students don’t know Berkeley. We know campus, blurring laptop screens and choice coffee shops. The demands of the self-designated “No. 1 public university in the world” have kept us cooped up for too long. We know campus like the back of our hands, navigate it, on the rougher days, before even the first cup of coffee. Yet more often than not, the average Cal students find themselves on the island of collegedom, more separated from the day-to-day life of the bay than incorporated into it.

This column seeks to act as a jumping-off point into the diversity that surrounds us, an experiment, an exploration and invitation to the many worlds coexisting with us in our very surroundings.

We learn of places by word of mouth, and whether by reading or on the internet, it is always through other people that we come to know them. This column, I hope, opens up one more avenue to share the treasures, great and small, that I have found.

Selling fresh, whole oysters taken straight from Tomales Bay, Hog Island Oyster Co. is located at 20215 Shoreline Highway in the town of Marshall.

Isabel writes the Thursday column on discovering Berkeley and the greater Bay Area. You can contact her at [email protected].