Berkeley and The Lost Coast

I visited Caius for his graduation ceremony and to go on a backpacking trip in the Lost Coast.

I finally got to meet his friend Claire, who's about as cool as I could have imagined. Caius's parents took us out to a delicious dinner and then we went home to Caius's coop and watched Carl Sagan, which was a campy trip. Saturday I had more interesting, thoughtful conversations in one day than I typically have in a month. I could probably write a handful of posts from what I discussed that day alone.

Caius's commencement that morning would have been pretty boring if not for his friend David, who I sat with. We chatted with his family afterwards at the reception. His graduation was extra special for the fact that Caius had dropped out of school for a year with no plans to return. Evidently his dad had promised to quit smoking if Caius ever graduated. Here's wishing him good luck.

That afternoon Caius and I took a nap and did yoga on his coop's roof. We checked out the "free pile" in the basement. We played dress-up for awhile, Caius picked out a shirt and I found a messenger bag in new condition. We also ate greek yogurt with honey in a broken, tilted couch hung outdoors on a rope that was reminiscent of a Dali painting. Caius and Claire and I had indian food for dinner accompanied by an intense discussion about the philosophical contrast between Pilsner and IPA. That night I chatted with Claire for a while and was *gasp* impressed by Stone IPA, which I guess has been due for another chance (John Lazur has called it his favorite beer). I got to meet another longtime friend of Caius's while we packed for our trip.

We left the next morning for the Lost Coast. We stopped along the way at a secret hot spring that's only accessible at low tide. About 500 feet down an incredibly steep bluff later we arrived to find about 35 mostly naked people crammed into the area of two VW bugs. I teetered a little, but I couldn't really imagine letting the opportunity slide, so I squeezed myself in. The spring had been dug out by hand and every day after high tide someone would siphon the cold seawater out. The temperature was perfect and everyone was friendly (you have to be when you're packed bare cheek to bare cheek). To top it off, an old guy passed out chocolate and strawberries to everyone.

The Lost Coast is breathtakingly beautiful. Most of the pictures I've found online were taken when it's sunny, but when we arrived at Shelter Cove, the mountains were wreathed in marine layer. The black sand in the cliffs and on the beach contrasted sharply with the deep green of the mountains. The pictures are courtesy of Caius's friend Kaija and you can find the rest of her photos from our trip here.


The vegetation ranged from fennel and cow parsley in the canyon openings to pine trees, ceanothus and manzanita up into the mountains. I've also never seen so much poison oak in one place. Poison oak was the one common denominator between all of the plant communities we passed through, from ridge-line chaparral to sand dunes. I got pretty good at dancing between branches with my frame-pack.

We were thirteen people, mostly from Caius's coop, Loth. All the food would be vegetarian, and the trip organizers had brought such luxuries as soy milk, broccoli and kale. I should note that every meal we had was incredibly delicious, partly because of the nature of backpacking, but partly because the food was excellent. No matter how crazy it was to bring something like kale or to forgo nutritious meat, our diet ended up being a lot closer to my at-home diet than my dad's summer sausage, nuts and dehydrated mashed potatoes. Also, despite my fears about all of the water and non-calories we were taking up, my pack weight was never enough to bother me much. I had much more trouble with the rocks and sand on the beach.

We camped the first night in Shelter Cove, not too far from our cars. We woke up to the sound of raindrops on our tents. That kind of set the tone for the day. We packed up and started walking down the beach. We found washed-up dead sea animals of enormous size, including an almost-fresh sting ray, two octupus, two chitons, a bunch of starfish and what looked like the remains of a grouper. The ten miles of beach that we planned on crossing that day were impassable at high tides, so we shivered for a couple of hours at a canyon opening for lunch while the wind did it's best to blow rain under our tarp and the tarp into the sky.

Lesson learned #1: It rains a lot in the Lost Coast.
Lesson learned #2: Waterproofed nylon isn't waterproof.


By the time we rolled into camp that night, everything I owned had been soaked through with rain. Actually, one thing was dry. A pair of socks I'd stuffed into my upside down camp cup was the only dry fabric I owned. Words cannot express my joy at finding those socks, which possibly illustrates how thoroughly demoralized we were by the end of that day. We huddled under our tarp, cooked and changed our clothes for any marginally drier ones we might have. Soon we shivered off to our tents and into our damp sleeping bags.

The next morning was cloudy and dewy, but the rain had finally stopped. We hung our clothes on trees that morning in hopes that they might dry, to little effect. Once we got walking, the dew on the grass quickly soaked my already wet sneakers to the point of squelching. We hiked up the canyon and forded the stream a couple of times. Thanks to my coop companions' liberal attitude towards nudity I managed to cross both fords without getting my clothes any wetter than they already were.

The next three miles were about the steepest switchbacks I've ever seen. You had to go slowly so your feet wouldn't slide back. I passed the time with a conversation about agribusiness and human rights (my answer was no, neither food nor technologically advanced seeds are or should be basic human rights).



That night the sky was clear and we crowded around the fire to dry our clothes by. It was pretty cool watching sleeping bags, shoes, socks and shirts all steaming away. A few of us decided to sleep on the ridgeline under the stars (who's perfect glory was only marred by my lack of glasses).


When I woke up, the sky had turned the faintest gray. I wondered if oncoming dawn had already obscured the stars or if those were clouds I was looking up at. A raindrop on the face answered my question. I yelled, "Wake up, guys, it's raining!". We hurried to pack our sleeping bags and scurried down the hill as the drops quickened and thickened. Soon we were in tents and fast asleep again.

By the time we woke up, things had progressed into a steady downpour. The hollow we'd camped in was slowly turning into a pond. We divided up our food for two groups: the one that would continue across the mountains to where we'd parked our cars (including Caius) and the group that had to turn back to get home for things (including myself and three others). Two long Caius-hugs later and the four of us were marching down the ridgeline against driving rain and gales that threatened to throw us off the ridge. Once again I felt the familiar sensation of my rain-jacket hemorrhaging water into my clothes beneath. The four of us tore down that hill at a near-run (quite a feat considering the precipitous angle).

We arrived at our first camp in the early afternoon. By that time, the rain had stopped and our clothes were just starting to dry, though both I and another had slipped in the increased river flow at the fords. Our goal was to camp in a canyon about four miles from where our cars were parked, but we were making such good time we'd started daring to hope we might make it to our beds by late that night. The tide forced us to break for dinner, but the sun came out while we were cooking, for the first time since our trip had started. It was amazing how quickly clothes dried under actual sunlight. The latitude pushed nightfall back almost an hour, but we still had nine miles of cobblestone and sand to cross.

The canyon opening we'd planned on camping in looked like something from a fantasy book in the twilight of sunset. We sat there awhile while the other Eagle Scout on the trip filtered fresh water. The trees arched over the stream to create a tunnel into the increasing darkness of the canyon, while the mist from the waves gave everything a hazy sort of aura about it.

As I think you might already suspect, we ultimately agreed to make our bid for home that night. I was pretty eager considering that my right ankle had settled into constant pain from all the abuse I'd heaped on it through the trip. I passed the time and pain of the final stretch again in discussion with postmodern socialists. By the time it was properly dark we'd finished with cobblestones and the moon had come out, so we never needed flashlights. The last couple of streams were too dark and too wide to completely jump, but we didn't really care because we knew we'd be able to take off our shoes soon enough.

A whirlwind of a car ride later and I was in Davis just before dawn broke. I took a long shower and curled into the warm bed I'd dreamed about all week.