Immediately, my mind clung to that trip 36 years ago when interesting character Dan Cavoli ran it. I remember going to the bathroom in the middle of the woods with nobody remotely close to us. Honestly, I highly doubt this scenario would fly today. Would I send my teenager to Mammoth Cave with a group of teenagers with only one adult who wasn't even a current teacher at the school?
Interestingly, these thoughts crept in, only after a phone call to my brother, Fred, who informed me that Dan Cavoli passed away last year. But I was calling Fred to determine where exactly he proposed to Judi in Big Sur, which he did. And, man, he picked an ideal spot. Totally beautiful there. Like, wow.
It was only after my trip, when I pinned down Fred, and was like, "Dude, where exactly did you propose to Judi because I'm pretty sure I was just there?"
And brother Fred responded, "The sun, sky, clouds, ocean mist, mountains, floral landscape and rainbow all came together at the top of the heavenly plateau way back in 2011."
Presumably, the exact spot was at a scenic overlook in Big Sur. I had thought it could have been Pfeiffer Beach, which is pretty breathtaking.
Matt Kalinowski, a good friend for the past 25 years who I have referred to as "The Polish Falcon himself," is a big-time camper, and he helps me see the major value in unplugging and getting out in nature. A Southern California native, Matt transplanted himself to Portland, and that's only helped him become a wily, skilled, adventurous sort.
"It's the purity of being human," Matt said. "Everything is so defined. You have fire, shelter, food, water, and you cover them in certain ways. There's a beauty to focusing on the basic elements we need."
Matt does a lot of camping in the summer in Oregon and after 2020, started doing solo trips. He has so much experience that he's safe and prefers to be outside of campgrounds. So he's out on his own in the wilderness and estimates that he does about 30-40 trips a year.
"When you go with groups, you're lucky to go once or twice a year, coordinating everybody's schedules," he said. "I did my first solo trip, and it was amazing. It can be scary. You hear everything at night, and out here in Oregon, we have Sasquatches and shit."
This past week, in fact, Matt was here:
But Matt is on a different end of camping as me and my buddy, Tony Deville, who was kind enough to invite me on the Big Sur trip. Tony has only camped three times, but did some pretty darn scenic places, including Malibu and Yosemite. We were with an extremely experienced camper, who took us under his wing to show us some basics and somehow stay patient. That was much-appreciated.
Camping with Tony is exceptionally enjoyable, partly because of his horrific fear of bears. The good news, which we didn't learn until the last day, is that there are no bears in Pfeiffer State Park. However, on the final night, we kept hearing rustling and twice shined our flashlights upon a raccoon, which once scurried up a tree.
This raccoon, obviously, had a sweet tooth because Tony was concocting creative camp-fire marshmallows that involved strawberries, and that had to be accidental raccoon bait. Eventually, strangely, it appeared that an old lady was close to our camp site. She was out of breath and coughing. The lady was real close, but I wasn't positive it was indeed an old lady.
I asked, "Are you a person?"
Tony added, "Hey, man, are you alright?"
Our flashlights shined upon the raccoon, again. Terrible cough for that raccoon. Perhaps it's around too many camp fires at Pfeiffer. Can't say we found Sasquatch, but we did find an out-of-shape raccoon with a sweet tooth.
