Big Sur, Big Trees

Pulling into Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park is actually a bit of a hazard. You drive from the bright open skies above Hwy 1 into almost total darkness in about 20 yards. As your eyes adjust you realize with delight why it’s so dark. It’s the trees, stupid. Really, really big trees.

There they are, right outside our car windows. The bases of redwood trees that are almost the size of our car.

Of course, you want to stop and look, but that’s probably not smart because the next guy right behind you is also pulling off Hwy 1, and he’s about to be thrust into darkness too. Will they see our brakes lights? Not if they’re busy looking up.

So with that in mind we pulled ahead to the official park entrance, paid our 10 bucks, and another dollar for a map and began our visit to one of the nicest state parks you’ll ever run across. It was me, Susie and Nellie (one of our rescue Chihuahuas) who got out of the trusty Honda, and began our visit to Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park with the obligatory trip to the facilities.

Now, normally I wouldn’t start one of these pieces with details about park facilities, but it’s one of the first things I noticed when we arrived. The facilities are really new and… clean. So are the parking lots. The signage. The ADA trails. The bridges that cross the Big Sur river. 

The park has created an accessible deck around the bases of one of the cluster of trees which puts them in touching distance to even those with very limited mobility. Someone has been putting money and thought into the park and it shows.

We decided to get Nellie out for some fresh air and fitness. With dogs restricted to ‘developed’ areas of the park, we put her on the leash and let her sniff her way through the fantastic ADA pathways, around the campgrounds and on the bridges over the Big Sur River. We used these bridges to cross over to the campsites.

Even the most reluctant of hotel-room adventurers will be inspired to give camping a go here, as many of the campsites are an experience unto themselves. Small clearings lined with a layer of pine needles among clusters of 1,000 year-old trees that enclose the campsites and put a polite but formidable barricade between you and your neighbor.

It’s startling and sobering to just stand here. Startling because I finally realize, standing here in a cluster of two or three of these giants, just how big these things are. They come straight out of the ground and grow straight up for a couple of hundred feet. They spread out to take all the sunshine they want, leaving you and your feet in the blue shadows on the ground.

It’s a sobering cathedral-like experience and being so, I’m given to a few moments of silent reflection:  Holy smokes, I reflect. These things are simply unbelievable.

But I also reflect on the fact that I’m standing in one of a handful of remaining stands of sequoia sempervirens. The other 98% have been cut down.

But that was then, and this is now.

I put those thoughts behind me as we watch Nellie marking her turf with a thimble full of pee at the base of a redwood that’s six stories high and about 32 chihuahuas across. But she’s doing her part: rainfall is pretty unpredictable these days and every thimble-full helps.

I don’t want to keep harping on the trees, but like so many things around here, until you see them in person, you haven’t really seen them at all. And with the excellent access and fresh, updated facilities, you’re pretty much out of excuses for not having had your own reflective, holy smokes moment standing among the redwoods.