Santa Cruz Double Fisting

Contributed by Sam
Lights: Fenix L2D-CE, Inova Gen2 X1, Gerber Infinity
Location: Felton, CA.

Well, as part of a greater scheme to help a friend, I found myself driving up to Oakland, CA for a night.. After we had taken care of business, we drove back through Santa Cruz on our way home to Cambria. Santa Cruz just so happened to be having their farmers market, so we stopped to stroll the boulevard, and to eat some fine food.. As the evening arrived, we had met with a few of our friends, Fire, Naan, and a few other assorted people of the woods. We all attended a music show put on by bicycle riders who powered their amplifiers with a generator system hooked up to two stationary, peddling cyclists. It was a pity the music wasn't great (though the idea was cool), and we all decided to head home....
This is where the story gets interesting...

The night became late, and this large crowd of people we were with all decided to head home, with exception to the fact that they did not have any means of transportation......That's where I come in.. In my little 5 passenger '97 Honda Accord we managed to fit 8 full grown adults, two stuffed hiking backpacks, and three sacks of groceries into it plus all the other stuff that my friend and I had prior, and took off into the redwoods...

We ended up in this small town named Felton after driving on a hairpin road for 10 miles, and dropped off a couple of people there. The remaining people said that they slept at a place called 'Magic Mountain'. So off we went to Magic Mountain, up some steep hills, through a couple private gates, and onto unpaved road.... When we arrived at 'Magic Mountain' I noticed a huge, broken down tour bus, and absolutely nothing else except forest all around...

Upon shutting the engine off, we were plunged into absolute pitch black darkness, accompanied by a warm silence that permeated our senses..."Oh, good" I thought.. "I actually am prepared for this situation"... As time went on, and people got out of the car and tended their things, my vision improved a bit and I noticed another older '80's style Astro Van, and some other hand-made shacks in the woods around us...After the initial shock of the darkness, I decided to pull out my Gen 2 Inova X1 and inspect around the car... The first thing Naan said was, "Oh wow, you have a light... Nice".. Yeah.. I've got a light, a few of them in fact...

Now that everyone had finished tending their things, there became a central goal among us to build a fire... As soon as that goal came up, everyone started cautiously scrounging for whatever branches they could find in the dim light of sporadic lighter strikes.... "Oh my!" I thought to myself.. "This is my time to shine...".. I head back to my car, grab a Fenix L2D-CE and a Gerber Infinity in red. I walk up to the hillside where everyone is stumbling around and fire up the Fenix in one hand, the X1 in the other, and kept the Gerber in my mouth to see where I was walking (that's right, double fisting, and oral action!). I used the Fenix and Inova to spotlight the ground for my friends so they could see, and Lo and Behold! Everyone could SEE and could gather wood so much quicker!.. Everyone was so grateful and surprised and happy that they started laughing and shouting into the night in celebration..

After we had gathered our wood, with me acting as a mobile light tower, I pocketed the torches and let the fire illuminate our faces....Around the fire, Fire told stories about 'Magic Mountain'.. How it is actually the first mound of seabed to have emerged out of the ocean many years ago. And here on this mountain, the Native Americans carried out ceremonies and other rituals of healing on their people. After the story everyone sat peacefully around the fire and casually tended to it..Eventually we all went to sleep, some of us in the old bus, others out in the woods under a tarp, and me being probably the highest creature of comfort there, decided to sleep in my car... Good thing too, our camp was visited by mountain lion that night..

In the morning I went out for a walk, to take a survey of this place and enjoy the warm sunshine. What I found was amazing. A huge solar panel array, small well and greenhouses filled with plants, all constructed by these backwoods folks who have no proper names. Quite an amazing place I might say..