It's funny, getting older. Priorities change. Classifying order of importance becomes based on the truisms of standard cultural dictation: the job, house, mortgage, wife, kids, car payments, assets and all that jazz. Savings. Planning for the future. These were things that for most of us in our roaring twenties were out of sight out of mind. Pun somewhat intended. Today is another matter. Our wonderful cluster of human beings that make up our group of friends has begun to take on the real world responsibilities of rearing families of their own, buying houses, and settling down. This process of baby making and acting "all adult" is serious business, and many of our crew were not able to partake in the annual campout in Big Sur. My emotions were running raw from this change. I was so used to looking forward to this once a year gala, the hilarity, the food, the surf, the smells of the fall leaves . . . how could a year be called a year without the Sand Dollar Beach Campout?

Well, I was determined to find out. Solo style. It was time for a vision quest, a campout on my own, and a practice in silent meditation and breathing. Mr. Single Guy has no startup family disc running in his hard drive so I felt I should get out in nature and commune a little with this blessed force field of biosphere that surrounds our daily bread. My mind was on the San Rafael Wilderness, time to get out and hike in my namesake, the archangel Raphael stomping around in god's land with nothing but a pack on my back and the sun above.

But then I saw the swell models. Surf gets me every time. Yes, folks there will be some talk of wave riding and reef navigating during this new series of articles. I had to forgo the San Rafael Wilderness for another blog, another time, but I will be in those dark gray and brown sun bleached hills soon enough. This trip I had to satiate that desire to stroke into oceanic energetic waves traveling thousands of miles to meet me in a great accordance that defied logic and reason.

Fate plays a role in everyone's life. I like to allow things to unfurl for me in as natural a way as possible. No artificial colors or flavors please. So when a kind soul at the school where I teach offered me her and her husband's campsite reservation for Turkey Mutilation Day, how could I refuse? It was at Montana De Oro -- The Hills of Gold! So named for their spring Aptitude for flowering in a most stupendous palette of colors. This was fall, and that meant a possibility of weather, but a guarantee on exposure to swell. Packed with all the necessities, i.e. way too much stuff, I headed north to see if the Hills of Gold could provide golden lumps in the water as well.

ER Harris