Six Miles Is Far Enough
Some trips you plan for months. This was not one of them. There was no permit drama, no spreadsheet, no agonizing over base weight. My gear was already logged in the app from past trips, so packing came down to opening the list, confirming I had everything, and zipping the bag. There was a free Saturday, a stretch of coast we'd been meaning to sleep on, and the quiet certainty that six miles in from the road would be far enough to leave everything else behind.
Point Reyes stops being the Bay Area almost the moment you turn off the highway. The fog and the cattle and the long empty ranch roads close in behind you, and an hour from the city you are somewhere that feels like the edge of the continent, and the edge of the continent is exactly where you are.
The three of us at Bear Valley, packed and grinning, about to walk the long way to camp.
The three of us shouldered packs at the Bear Valley trailhead and started the six miles to Coast Camp on foot. The rest of the family had a better idea. They parked at Laguna, the short way in, and walked the little one down the wide coast road at his own unhurried pace. Two routes led to the same fire, and we would meet on the beach.
Bear Valley begins in the trees, cool and green and shot through with morning light.
The short way in from Laguna. A small person, a big coast, no particular hurry.
The trail starts in the forest, among tall firs on soft single-track with the light coming down in bars through the trees, and then tips you out onto the open bluffs above the ocean. That transition never gets old. One minute you're in the green hush of the woods and the next the whole Pacific is laid out below you, flat and enormous and the exact blue of nothing in particular.
The yew tree, a marvelously large tree standing all alone out here, and the kind of landmark you remember a trail by.
We passed the yew tree along the way, that great solitary giant holding down its own patch of hillside. There's no reason a tree like that should be where it is, and somehow that's the whole appeal. You stop, you look up into it, and then you keep walking toward the sound of the surf.
Coast Camp sits just back from the beach, and by the time we'd dropped our packs the others had arrived from the Laguna side. Tents went up and shoes came off, and then there was nothing left on the agenda at all, which was of course the entire point.
Late-afternoon nonsense on an empty January beach.
We spent the long golden end of the day on the sand. Someone drew an enormous sun-wheel in the beach with a stick of driftwood at its center, spokes radiating out toward the water, the kind of drawing you make only because you have absolutely nowhere else to be. The little one ran the spokes. The tide ignored all of it.
Then we built a fire, because a beach in January asks for one. We fed the fire driftwood and sat close, the sun going down red over the water and the kid wrapped in someone's down jacket. This is the part nobody photographs well and everyone remembers perfectly. The talk slows down, the cold comes up off the sand, and the silence settles into the comfortable kind that belongs to people who don't need to be anywhere in the morning either.
A driftwood fire, a sunset, and the best company. You don't need much more than this.
Dinner by lantern, the kid in a headlamp. One stove, one table, no rush.
In the morning the coast handed us a bright, blustery day. The wind came up off the water and made the case for moving rather than lingering. One night was exactly the right amount anyway. We broke camp, took the obligatory group photo, and walked back out the way we'd come, lighter than we'd arrived in every sense that counts.
The morning after. Everyone present and accounted for.
That's the whole story. Nothing went wrong, nothing went especially right, nobody learned a lesson. We drove home that afternoon and were back in the world by dinner. But for one night, six easy miles from the nearest road, we had left all of that behind, and the leaving is reason enough to go.
Plan the easy one
Not every trip needs a spreadsheet. Backpackers Friend lets you sketch a simple overnight in a few minutes. Pick a trailhead, drop a camp, and see the distance. Your gear list is already saved from last time, so packing is a five-minute check instead of a chore. The planning gets out of the way and you go leave the calendar behind. Free to get started, no account required.
