The first thing to know about walking the California coastline, from Point Lobos to the Golden Gate Bridge, is that it isn’t exactly legal. But when you have a radio host with you, you’ll find there isn’t much he can’t talk his way out of. The same goes for the professional entertainer. And the lawyer—well, it never hurts to have a lawyer along, does it?
“Sometimes you have to trespass!” declares John Sandidge, the snowy-haired host of “Please Stand By,” the in-studio live music show on KPIG, as we make our way up Highway 1 in his Grand Marquis. Also in the car are Richard “Sticky Icky Dicky Bob” Stockton, the 64-year-old comedian behind the Planet Cruz variety show and attorney Ben Rice, also 64, perhaps best known locally for his advocacy of medical marijuana. Clad in jeans and thermals, and loaded on coffee (and a peanut butter cookie for Sandidge), the trio is ready for one of their weekly coastal walks.
Sandidge, the oldest of the crew by a decade, is the one responsible for today’s outing, and several others like it over the last two years. He, Stockton and Rice, along with Laurence Bedford, who owns the Rio Theater and wasn’t able to make it today, have so far walked just under 100 miles of consecutive coastline in 5-6 mile increments, driving to one location one week, then picking up where they left off the following week.
The rules are simple: “If there’s a beach area, you walk on it,” says Sandidge, who feels that when it comes to exploring the California coastline, the ends justify the means.
“There should be a walking path along our beaches,” he insists.
For now, the men make their own trails. Sometimes there’s an animal path they can follow, or there’ll be a low tide and enough beach to walk on. Sometimes they have to traipse through brambles of blackberries. After one of their walks, Sandidge discovered eleven ticks on his leg. “We don’t know what we’re going to find,” he says.
Indeed. Or who will find them. Peter and Donna Thomas, authors of The Muir Ramble Route, a guidebook that traces John Muir’s 1868 walk from San Francisco to Yosemite, were surprised to one day find Sandidge and company wandering around in their yard several weeks ago. The Thomases invited them in for coffee. They got to talking and it turns out they have the same hobby.
Step Up
The Thomases define this sort of long-distance walking as “urban backpacking.” The goals of traditional backpacking—to walk from one spot of natural beauty to another—almost always require an automobile to get “to nature” in the first place. The Thompsons advocate taking it one step further by walking through cities to the natural areas.
“It is this idea of walking as a green, sustainable activity. Walking to take your vacation and to find enjoyment in your own local area and local nature,” says Peter, who believes walking is a vital piece of the conservation puzzle. “Our belief is, as more people see the natural beauty in their own areas, they’ll realize that the people who are trying to protect them aren’t crazy.”
John Muir, the inspiration for the Thomases and countless others (“Ask any person that backpacks who influenced you most, and it’ll either be their scout leader or John Muir,” says Peter), would likely agree—the ties between his 1,000-plus mile walks through natural areas and his founding of the Sierra Club are indisputable.
Driving up Highway 1, Sandidge tells me the last time they hiked near this area, they came upon a long dirt path they thought would lead them to the beach. But instead they wound up on someone’s private property: A rusty pickup truck pulled up beside them and a menacing voice growled, “You boys lost?”
I instinctively suck in air with a deep hiss. That’s the stuff of late-night campfire stories, if I’ve ever heard it. “What did you say?” I venture.
“I said we were lost,” Sandidge says with a shrug. “Another time, we told somebody we were looking for a missing little boy. ‘Have you seen him? Have you seen our little boy?’” Rice and Stockton chuckle from the backseat. I can’t tell whether this is joke laughter or knowing laughter, but I join in anyway.
Of course, when John Muir walked, he didn’t have a trespassing problem, says Donna. But today things are different. “In our culture we put great value on people being able to have private property and keep people off of it,” she warns.
One Everything
With that in mind, Sandidge, Stockton, Rice and I set off into Año Nuevo State Reserve a few miles north of Davenport—one of only five breeding areas for elephant seals in the United States. Unfortunately, the season is just about over so we won’t see any today, says Sandidge. I make a mental note to come back next year.
As we descend upon the beach I immediately feel dwarfed by the nature around us. There are sandy hills and rocky bluffs to my left tall enough that I can’t see anything beyond them. To my right is the mighty Pacific Ocean, softened by the fog into a dark matte blue that blends with the sky out at the horizon. We step carefully across the rocks carpeting the sand. Fist-sized rocks. Dinosaur egg-sized. Rocks that could easily rotate your ankle if you’re not paying attention. I say a silent thank you that they’re not rain-slicked.
Rice keeps his eyes on the ground. He says he always tries to find interesting stones to bring home for his wife, especially if they’re shaped like a heart. “You know, you can’t always buy flowers.” He shrugs sweetly.
As the four of us move down the beach, we shift in and out of arrangements naturally, like the tide, walking sometimes in pairs, sometimes all in a row. Rice tells me that Stockton often walks by himself, scribbling ideas for jokes into his notebook.
Stockton came unprepared today, with a straw cowboy hat, Los Angeles-ready sunglasses and street shoes, which he went home to change out of while the others were waiting to see if Bedford materialized. He and I walk together for a bit and I mine him for story ideas and writing tips. Eventually we stop to admire a collection of dark algae-covered rocks, visible in the low tide. I point out a maroon starfish clinging to one of the rocks.
“So why do you do this?” I ask. Stockton was the last to join the crew, and in fact missed the first couple legs of their collective journey.
He says he comes because it connects him to the earth and reminds him that everything is one. He tells me about a vision he once had (“When I was on a substance, but still”) in which we humans were just like bubbles, floating next to the surface of the ocean, part of it all. We are made of water, after all. I inhale and take it in. We stand there for a moment, watching the waves roll in and then flatten back into the sea.
“Hey, down in front!” comes the call. “Can’t see!” Sandidge and Rice have come up behind us, pretending the ocean is some crowded concert. We laugh and continue on. Bubbles bouncing in a row.
The lack of a predetermined trail on this land frees us to direct our attention anywhere we like. In some places, the sand looks so pristine, like icing smoothed over a cake. In one spot the sand, wet with the trickle of fresh water coming down from the hills, sparkles with flecks of gold. In some places the rocks of the bluffs are draped in layers like gothic lace. In others they’re stained deep rust red. Sandidge says the bluffs are constantly eroding and moving back. He says there’s a native Chumash word for this, called trancas. It means, “walking mountains.”
We meander onward for another couple miles, over a big sheath of rock with billiard-ball-sized holes in it, filled with still water and the remnants of little crustaceans’ shells. We traverse a shelf of spongy straw-like matter, and then move back down onto the sand. But our eyes, as they combed the beach, were too focused on the small details around us to realize where we’d wandered. Sandidge notices first, and extends his arm in front of me to stop me in my tracks. “Shhh,” he whispers.
He is huge, and mean looking, and this is definitely his territory. At first glance I thought he was asleep but—shit, he’s looking right at us.
Elephant seals’ eyes are so dark and so eerily round that they look like holes bored into their heads. Expressionless eyes, I decide then, are the scariest kind.
The sand-colored seal lies no more than 120 feet in front of us, about the distance from home plate to second base. Frozen, I stare at him for a few long moments before my eyes adjust to the whole scene around me. Not another 100 feet behind him is a colony of at least 30 seals, lying together in a marbled tableau of caramel, dark brown and cream.
“Come on,” Rice whispers, and we backtrack a few feet so as not to disturb the elephant seals, which I later read can weigh as much as 5,000 pounds and move “faster than you would think,” according to Sandidge. We climb up a gulley in the hills just above the seals and sit down in the grass. With a sigh of relief from our safe perch we take in the magnificent view.
“Is this lunch, then?” Sandidge asks. We take sandwiches and water out of our packs, and let the sun peeking through the clouds warm our necks.
Below us, the seals lie in a cluster, resting their heads on top of one another. I think of my cat this morning, laying her chin on my arm and purring.
They come to the beach to mate. One male will have a harem of 30 or 40 females, but other non-dominant males linger menacingly around the outside of the pack, waiting to mount a stray female that may wander over.
Below us we can see the peripheral male we almost walked head-first into begin to move towards the pack, propelling himself across the sand with his back fin like someone doing “the worm” at a party. As his body moves a ripple goes through it, like a ribbon of movement in a water-bed, and he leaves a wide trail behind him in the sand.
Back at the park entrance, talking about the seals, Rice tells me “when they fight they make these weird, wild, incredible noises.” He wasn’t lying. I hear it now and they sound like they’re belching in each others’ faces.
Gargling. Wailing. The male retreats, and the group settles back to peace.
The Joy of Lollygagging
After 40 minutes or so (“This is some championship lollygagging,” John announces) we get up and head back.
They’ll finish their trek this month, but Sandidge says their plan for after that is to just reverse direction and do it again. He says even the exact same places can seem totally new, if you just approach them from another angle.
“You see it all totally differently,” he says. “And there is so much to see. What’s on the beaches and along the trails, it’s just incredible. I mean, no day is the same. Whenever we go, it has always been great, and no day is similar to another day. You’re always in some kind of a different situation.”
