Our family wanted to savor the last bit of summer sun and fun before the schools reopened.  We signed up early when a friend wondered if we wanted to be part of an eighteen family camping bash under the redwoods at Big Sur’s Pfeiffer State Park.  Finally, our family was going to commune with nature. 

We set about pitching our tents in the sunniest spot on an open meadow.  As we unfurled the green and white nylon tent from its dapper carrying case, my husband said something he has said everyday since the day I married him.

           “Now, read the instruction manual.  Tell me the first step.”

           “It says take the tent out of the bag,” I began.  But for the sound of gnashing teeth and gurgling brooks, all was quiet in Big Sur. “Cross the rods as shown in this diagram.”

            “Which rods?” My husband grabbed the manual away from me.  “Now I’ll read it and you do it.”

            “Here to do the dirty work, as usual,” I grunted grumpily.  

    “Okay, so which rods?” I barked, looking around the way a woman does when she is lost, the way a man never does when he is lost. “Let’s ask one of our buddies to help us.”

            “Are you crazy? This is simple. Insert the rods into the pins at the four corners!”

            “Which four corners?” I couldn’t see any corners but I could count at least a hundred pins.

            “Don’t tell me you can’t see the four corners?” His voice had an edge to it, the kind of edge that knows it’s cornered, once and for all.  We were going to be hammered and nailed for being the slowest to pitch a tent. It didn’t help that we hadn’t even brought a hammer. Asking to borrow one would be like being caught at Customs at Singapore’s Changi with a suitcase bursting with slabs of Wrigley’s spearmint. When you’re outdoors you want to show that you’re an outdoors kind of person, that you’ve done this just about all your life.

“Reading the manual, you guys? Don’t even bother!” jeered a friend's voice from the far end of our campsite.

           “Where’s your tarpaulin?” asked another  friend’s ten-year old son who wandered in, watching in awe as we tried to drill in the stakes into the unrelenting ground with our sneakers.  This kid was probably born at a campsite.

          “Tarpaulin? What tarpaulin?  Whose tarpaulin?”

          “The thing you need to lay out before you bring out your tent. You know. So the base of your tent won’t tear.” No, we didn’t know. All the list had said was to bring a tent.

           Pretty soon I found out that not everyone in our group was a happy camper, after all. Not everyone liked to sleep in a tent under the stars where every howl of the wind pummeled and lifted you up high above the trees, where every rustle of the trees was like the pounding rhythm of rain, where every tiny sound wave impinging upon our nylon barrier reached the ear-drum, magnified a thousand times. 

          “For ten thousand years my ancestors have worked hard to bring me to where I am today.  Why would I want to go back to where they started?” said a late arrival into our campsite.  This was a friend who liked camping only by day. By night, however, he retired to his plush suite at Carmel Highlands Inn where a Jacuzzi soothed him from the rough ride of a bad hair day on a warm meadow.  He dreamt on a tight spring King-size Sealy Posturepedic while we thrashed about on a four square foot bed of rocks and gravel, with just a borrowed, ripped tarpaulin for protection from the forces of nature. The only thing he heard after his head touched the pillow was the blare of the alarm clock at 8 am.  The rest of us, all seasoned adventurers, retired on Medusa’s head with gregarious critters for company.  We listened to the tireless teeter of blue jays fighting over crackers, the cranky chirp of crickets acting crummy over campers’ crumbs, the slow snarl of a mountain lion stalking a lowly creature on a forgotten trail. Yes indeed, our alarms went off through the night.

          Dawn ambled in at long last.  Our fears melted away as fast as the nocturnal raccoons fled with their share of strawberry fruit rolls. We didn’t dare balk at the idea of a three-hour hike that someone suggested to work off a hearty breakfast of pancakes and scrambled eggs. The most we walked in civilized San Jose was when we took out the weekly trash from our side-yard all the way to the curb.  Returning hikers were encouraging.  “Watch out for rattlesnakes.  I saw one as I started out on my trail!” a young man warned us as our huge, noisy group began our hike up to Pfeiffer Falls. 

The smell of pine rose from the forest floor as our feet crunched dried brown leaves in our path.  Rattlesnakes, mountain lions, blue jays and acorn-woodpeckers throng this wooded park where it is twilight even in full sunlight.  Tall California pines weave a lacy network of leaves and filter in just enough of the sun’s rays to keep the place damp, cool and mossy all the year round. At a tiny museum en route, a mountain lion lies in wait at its perch, its eerie stillness the only giveaway of a stuffed personality.  Rattlesnake skins, raccoon fur, the remains of a dinosaur’s jaw and other artifacts are on display in this little tribute to the park’s wonders. 

 The hypnotic scent of the California bay laurel, a close inedible cousin of the Turkish bay leaf, egged us on deeper into the trail where poison ivy twirls innocently around verdant ferns.  Lavender daisies with bright yellow middles peeped out prettily from rocks. We could have climbed on forever. Camping in the wild had rekindled my spirit of adventure, a spirit that had lain dormant under  suffocating folds of motherhood and drudgery.  No arduous trek seemed beyond me. Nothing seemed impossible that afternoon - until the icy waves of the Northern Pacific Ocean licked my feet.

   As we sat at Pfeiffer beach, huddled in jackets and shawls, some in our fearless herd began to contemplate climbing a gigantic rock promontory rising from the ocean bed.  Treacherous, frothy waves crashed and bored in through gaping holes in the rocks below.  Above, brave hearts climbed the steep, jagged rock surface for a spectacular view of the coastline. “Climbing that rock is not for the faint-hearted!” said an intrepid female companion. “The last time we were helped up by five men.”  

  Soon the wind steadily picked up grains of sand and hurled them angrily into our faces.  I longed for the comfort of my van where nothing, not the water, not the sand, not even the wind could get at me. Throw caution to the winds?  Heavens, no, I yearned to go home and let my body sink into a soft, reassuring bed buttressed by ten pneumatic layers of goose down mattress pads.