Digest NY Introduces 'Out in California'

We spent three nights camping along the Pacific Coast Highway before arriving in San Francisco. As we settle back into New York, and recall stories from the road, we'll be adding to this series of vignettes. Each night out there exposed us to new people and new environs and left us inspired to share them with you. Sometimes the tales have to do with food, sometimes they don't. Either way, you can expect one every Tuesday until we get to San Francisco. Welcome to Out in California.

I left Intelligentsia Coffee on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice around ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning. My destination was San Francisco, but I didn’t plan to get there until Friday. That gave me three nights of camping wherever I saw fit to do so along the Pacific Coast Highway. My only agenda was to have camp set up by nightfall, and after tacos for lunch in Santa Barbara, that happened for the first time 135 miles north in San Simeon State Park. Site 229 seemed like the right fit.

The sun had almost set when I heard a strange grumble behind me. I turned toward the edge of the woods where the noise came from and saw a tall man approaching. My pile of firewood was slowly accumulating around the base of the steel drum in which fires are permitted in San Simeon State Park. "They might give you a ticket for that," the voice said. But Leroy, a native of West Virginia it turns out, told me without an ounce of intention in his voice. He spoke softly and in the manner in which a teacher might address a student.

Leroy was in a bad bike accient in Florida three years ago. He no longer took the marathon rides he used to. His main trip now was the 30 miles to Cambria up Highway One from his home in Morro Bay.

"You're not supposed to gather," Leroy informed me. I let him know my curated pile of twigs were down branches and that I would never sacrifice tree limbs for fire more to make a good impression than anything else. I had three stacks: the small stuff I'd put over leaves and fallen pine needles, drumstick-size twigs that I'd teepee over those, and enough Louisville slugger-size branches that would ensure at least two hours of warmth and tall flames.

"Yea they don't like you doin' that," he said, "but I didn't see nothin. Where ya from?"

"New York."

"I'm from West Virigina. I don't work anymore. I can't," he said. "I'm crippled."

I thought it a strange thing for an avid cyclist and someone who walked with grace to my campsite from theirs to say, but didn't let it stop me from pulling a Mad River Extra Pale Ale from the cold pool of half-melted ice in my styrofoam cooler and prying it open with a decade-old Leatherman for him. I held it in his direction. He took it with a large hand and then, for the briefest of moments, the sound of glass bottlenecks clinking together was louder than the crackling pine burning in the fire. The orange glow it cast was enough to reveal Leroy's grey beard, but the grey beard wasn't enough to conceal a face that looked as though it had seen three lifetimes worth of stories unfold before its two blue eyes.

In Central California, on the Pacific Coast, the difference in temperature between afternoon and evening is twenty degrees. The best way to combat the drastic shift is with layers of clothing and by the time the moon was high in the sky casting its clean silver glow on Leroy and I, I was wearing almost every shirt I brought. Leroy didn't sit down on the weathered picnic table to drink his beer like I did. He finished it standing up and soon after faded into the shadows, relying on the subtle glow of his own now smoldering fire to get him home.

Without the distraction of another person, the sound of waves crashing onto the Pacific shore 300-yards away came into focus and mixed with the sounds of night creatures and burning pine. It left me in a trance that lasted until I heard another voice address me from over my shoulder.