Pandora at the Louvre in Paris this past May.
Bon voyage! Safe journey! Welcome home! Like me, I’m sure you’ve had to answer the question why we travel beyond our California Central Coast paradise. My answer was verified recently by Pandora Nash-Karner.
Throughout my 24 years living in Morro Bay, Pandora has been an active presence in her hometown of Los Osos. However, when I requested an interview, she surprised me. She preferred to explore her tomorrows instead of yester-years. Her current Facebook page states Pandora is a ceramic and digital artist.
“I work with clay and pixels. As an internationally award-winning graphic designer, I have transferred three decades of experience to new media and forms,” the page states.
Pandora has always been a versatile creative that has now moved forward to the next chapters of her life. Those who know her, know she lives life largely pouring her heart and multifaceted experiences into whatever she dedicates her talents to at the time. An engaged Los Osos resident and community advocate, she is a supporter and producer of cultural and creative arts, an active business owner, and a friend to all who take time to get to know her.
She requested time to contemplate my interview request and then to my surprise and appreciation I received the following gift by email one evening. It was a demonstration of her unique style as a writer and storyteller that I felt I could not improve upon, so I decided to share it:
“Well, let’s see. I have a Ham Radio license which is current, a captain’s license from the US Coast Guard, and I have sailed 40,000 miles offshore in deep water: from Easter Island to Pitcairn Island, where we got blown onshore for three days. I stayed with a great, great, great, many greats later, Fletcher Christian’s granddaughter (of “Mutiny on the Bounty” fame). It is the only tropical island I’ve ever visited on that I wouldn’t wanna live on. It was a dark and ominous place.
“I have sailed through the Austral Islands twice, through French Polynesia several times, the Tuamotu Islands. They constitute the world’s largest chain of coral atolls, featuring 78 low-lying atolls and islands spread across 2 million km square of the South Pacific in French Polynesia.
“I have sailed to the Marquesas Islands which has a fabulous history and evidence of llamas in carvings and sweet potatoes that arrived around 1000 AD. And where did those come from? Was Thor Heyerdahl right after-all? I’d like to think so.
“From the Marquesan Islands, I sailed to the Republic of Kiribati to an island called Fanning Island, probably another island I would never want to live on. From there, I sailed to Hawaii.
“I’ve done a similar trip from New Zealand back up and one from Hawaii down; and up and down the Pacific Coast from San Francisco to Acapulco and probably lots of other places too. This was mostly on a 65-foot Sparkman Stephens sailboat (sloop); I had a small boat for five years and then a larger, but still fairly small ocean-going sailboat for 25 years in the mooring field in Morro Bay, which I sold recently.
“I have walked a Camino twice (last year it was the entire Portuguese from Lisbon to Porto to Santiago to Finisterre) 455 miles. And I did it solo. I plan to walk a Camino again this year as well as the Cotswolds in England and in the Alps in four different countries.
“I am traveling a lot. Last year I was out of the country seven months. This year I’ll only be out about four months. I am a dual citizen, US and Canada. That’s probably all the trivia you need for now. I’ll ponder some of the other questions.
“While walking the Camino last year alone sometimes through the rain from 16 to 23 miles a day I pondered a number of things. And a few things I’ve implemented since coming back.
“Maybe those shared aha moments are your today story. At various times of our lives, we learn change can enhance our next stories when we’ve closed the books on our past and prefer to move on. Hope I’m making sense.”
Pandora’s closing paragraph made perfect sense to me. I too along with so many of my friends are experiencing lives in transition – a different career path or retirement, relocation and adaption to new friends and activities, empty-nesting, medical challenges or worse – the loss of a loved one. We suddenly realize time is dwindling, so we ponder how we want to spend the time we have left. We question what is most important to us and what we want to accomplish during our tomorrows.
Pandora’s words also laser-beamed a bright light on my Bookshelf Writers sister, Kiki Kornreich. She is the mega-traveler in our group and for her January 2026 column, she shared several life-lessons she has learned along the way. Here is one example she offered: “My hotel in Costa Rica had a small sloth sanctuary next door, and I was offered the opportunity to help with the afternoon feeding. Holding out a piece of carrot to a mama, I almost fell asleep while waiting for her long, sloooow arm to reach it. The doe-eyed sloth gave me a look of gratitude that was more rewarding than a paycheck. I was reminded that even when I move slowly, I’m making progress.”
In the past two years, this writer and my husband enjoyed two unique travel experiences that reenforced to me how a community is also organic. Change is a constant within its lifecycle. Does that mean we glean from other cities’ efforts by copycatting another community’s attractive assets? Not at all! It means we look inside to discover the assets we treasure then advocate for what we want our city to project and offer residents and travelers during our tomorrows.
In fact, did you know other communities have defunct power plants with stacks towering high into the sky? Like me, several travelers from Morro Bay have seen – even stayed – at the JW Marriott Savannah Plant, a luxury hotel converted from a 1912 power plant, situated in the heart of the Georgia city’s refreshed waterfront. Am I advocating for a hotel on Morro Bay’s waterfront? Not necessarily! But I believe Morro Bay’s rich history demands it discovers more ways to tell its own origin stories to our visitors, our relocated residents and our own children.
Timing is now that our City Council leadership has asked for our community engagement to craft what will become reinvigorated tomorrows for the paradise we will continue to call our home. As they say, it takes a village. www.morrobaygov.org. Scroll down to upcoming workshops and meetings regarding the waterfront planning and pending purchase of the historic Morro Elementary School.
