Hiking Boots to Buzzards’ Roost
Having nothing scheduled, we sleep until 6:30, when we both wake with the same need, scrambling for our camp shoes so we can hustle off to the nearby loo. If we were at home, we would have stayed upright, made coffee, and begun the day. But in camp, it seems still too dark to do anything serious, so M curls up for an additional doze, while I pull out my iPad to churn out another 1500 words of my latest imaginary adventure.
After a lovely camp breakfast of Raisin Bran, blueberries, raspberries and oranges, washed down with French pressed coffee, and milk, I do the washing up while M puts together a portable lunch in preparation for our hike to Buzzard’s Roost. We intend to leave by 10, but what with one thing and another it’s 11:15 by the time we set our feet on the path toward the Buzzard’s Roost trailhead.
It’s a lovely walk under the Highway One overpass, up through stands of redwoods terribly scorched by the Basin Complex fire of 2008, but still bravely pushing out green shoots of new growth. Then we’re in ceanothus and scrub oak country, then manzanita, and finally barren red rock with a vantage point that looks over to Mount Manuel landward and to the brilliant blue Pacific to seaward. We spread our unneeded extra layers of shirts over the red dirt and set out a lavish lunch of hard-boiled eggs, carrots, hummus, crackers, string cheese, grapes, apples, and prunes – all finger food, no grease. We stay looking out to sea until our spines begin to protest against sitting unsupported on the hard ground, then round up the eggshells and cheese wrappers with other leftovers and set off on the return loop.
One of my perennial games on a hike is to count how many different kinds of wildflowers Ican spot. In Edgewood Park near where I live, I have counted as many as forty in the spring, due to the many different micro-biomes there. On this day at Big Sur we tally twenty one, including columbine, native iris, wild strawberry, dandelion, buttercup, trillium, and others of which I do not know the names. Counting varieties is a great way of forcing yourself to be on the lookout and to really notice what is around you.
Our plan after returning to our campsite had been to hop in the car, take care of a couple of small purchases at the general store down the road, and then to drive down to Pfeiffer Beach. But after our purchases M turns to me and asks “Do you mind if we don’t go to the beach? I just want to veg.”
Instead we drive to the end of the road on the side of the river opposite our campground, just to see what is there. We watch a family playing softball on the weedy field for a while, and I want to check out the “seasonal footbridge” that the map shows opposite our campground (See the dotted line crossing the river at the end of Day Use Lot 4 on the above map?) M drops me off at the end of Parking lot 4 and drives away, while I follow the trail from the sign that says “Footbridge.”
Guess what. No footbridge. Must not be the season yet. I debate wading across the shallowest portion of the Big Sur River as it ripples past where the bridge should have been. I’m wearing my water shoes, and my cargo pants with the roll up option, and the water looks shallow. On the other hand, the bottom of the river is paved with rounded stones of varied sizes which could be very unstable and slippery, the water is so clear that it’s hard to gauge how deep it really is, and getting up the steep bank on the opposite side looks chancy. So I opt for the half-mile walk around to the far bridge at the end of the campground. (It would have been shorter, but the most direct route was “authorized vehicles only,” and a ranger directed me in a friendly but definitive way to the trail around, not through.)
By the time I make it to our campsite, M has gotten worried and set out in search of me. By the time we reunite the sun is definitely over the yardarm. She lights the portable campfire, I run cold water from the camp faucet over my tired feet, and we settle to reading, phoning, and munching the last of the crackers and hummus.
Dinner is experimental but turns out well. A vegetable medley cooked in Frying Pan #1, sliced parboiled potatoes with onions sautéed in frying pan #2, and lamb chops sauteed in Frying Pan #1 after the veggie medley had been evacuated, along with a nice Pinot Noir, dessert of shortbread and chocolate squares, and some sisterly discussion ranging from “Do you think Mom resented me?” to “Have you smoked marijuana?” to “I have this genetic deformity. Do you have it too?”
And by 9PM we are snuggled in our teardrop cocoon once more.
Coming next: The Beach! .
Years ago, my father used to say “Everything I know about life I learned from Tarzan of the Apes.” Although some tattered Tarzan paperbacks were around the house, somehow I never got around to reading them, though my kid sister read the series avidly. Some time back I mentioned this family story to my husband, and as a gag gift at Christmas he gave me the first four books of the series. They sat on my bookshelf untouched until four months into lockdown. With all libraries closed and the neighborhood Little Free Libraries exhausted, I turned in desperation to the Lord of the Jungle for escape.
Of course, we couldn’t leave it there. The second volume, The Return of Tarzan, sees Tarzan transformed into a 1912 version of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher: handsome, well-spoken, without ties, and able to fend off an adoring female or fight off a dozen malefactors without suffering a scratch. I’m about half-way through this volume, but I’m pretty sure that Tarzan’s true love Jane Porter will end up in his arms by the end. After all, I still have Son of Tarzan and Tarzan the Untamed waiting on the shelf, and I’m pretty sure Tarzan didn’t get it on with any of the apes.
We found a little oasis not too far from our home – the
classy trade paperbacks which look like they were originally purchased for a book club. Another features a variety of interesting non-fiction.
Of course, anything you put out for the public is liable to malicious abuse. A neighbor had worked with her daughter’s Girl Scout troop to set up a Little Free Library in front of her house. The girls decided it would be good to make it into a food pantry during the Lockdown, and stocked it with canned goods and dried pasta. The next morning the door had been ripped off and the canned goods had been scattered around, dented, wrappers ripped off. The debate began – was it vicious mean-spirited teens, or was it racoons attracted by the food? A neighbor’s security camera settled the question several days later: it was a person, not an animal. Maybe he was crazy-mad because he was hoping to find a book? New hinges were bought, and the Little Free Pantry is open again, fingers crossed.
Allyson Johnson 