This is the most amazing place I’ve hiked to in 37 years of living in California

There’s something about the first time you duck through Yosemite National Park’s Arch Rock entrance and into the sprawling majesty of the Valley. It’s a chills-inducing moment that stays with you forever. And no matter how many viewpoints I’ve climbed, or old plane wrecks I’ve hiked to, or mysterious beaches I’ve stumbled on, nothing has felt quite like that exact moment.

This story isn’t about Yosemite’s Arch Rock entrance, though.

It’s about last Thursday.

That’s the day I rediscovered that feeling and found the most amazing place I’ve been in 37 years of living in California — a full three and a half hours west of the gem of America’s national park system.

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A look inside one of Santa Cruz's three greenbelt open space preserves within its city limits.

A look inside one of Santa Cruz’s three greenbelt open space preserves within its city limits.

Liz Celeste/Special to SFGATE

Santa Cruz has three greenbelt open space preserves within its city limits, including The Pogonip — a 640-acre expanse that features 17 trails, 11.5 miles of hiking, and a mix of ancient redwoods and the remnants of a country club and polo ground that operated for three and a half decades, ending in 1947.

The city of Santa Cruz bought the land in 1989 from the Cowell Foundation, just three years after The Pogonip appeared in cult vampire classic “The Lost Boys,” and turned it into the preserve Santa Cruz residents (and UCSC students) know and love today.

Before it was a preserve or a polo ground or a golf course, however, it was an integral part of the construction of San Francisco in the 1850s. I learn as much, standing in front of a historic lime kiln, which remains mostly preserved in The Pogonip. This particular lime kiln looks straight out of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” – a beefy, double-decker bus-sized stone structure. Here’s how it worked: redwoods were slid into a series of tunnels at the bottom, limestone would be fed into the top, then the wood was lit on fire to heat the limestone and eventually turn it into pure lime. When you mix lime with water and sand, you end up with the mortar and plaster that makes it impossible to hang a picture with a nail in most old San Francisco apartments.

A look at both a historic photo of the Pogonip lime kiln and a present day one.

A look at both a historic photo of the Pogonip lime kiln and a present day one.

Liz Celeste/Special to SFGATE

This is one of 14 remaining lime kiln sites in Santa Cruz County that are credited with producing materials used to build San Francisco in the middle of the 19th century (the city was incorporated on April 15, 1850). And, don’t get me wrong, it’s very cool. But it’s not the most amazing place that I’ve been in 37 years of living in California.

That’s actually just behind it.


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“The hillside construction enabled limestone to be loaded from the top of the kiln,” a sign in front of the kiln reads. “A historic access road is located to the north of the kilns. A small quarry is located behind the kilns.”

Might as well check out the quarry.

I head a little north, and double back on the Lime Kiln Trail, which takes you up and behind the 170-year-old rock stoves to the limestone extraction site. As I enter the quarry, I just stop.

Oh my God. What … what is this place?

There’s a cute little row of small rock stacks that lead you into a quarry — the kind you’ll occasionally see as trail markers on hikes, with increasingly smaller rocks stacked one on top of the other.

There's a never-ending sea of rock stacks in the quarry - enough that it's impossible to catch even a fraction of them in a single photo.

There’s a never-ending sea of rock stacks in the quarry — enough that it’s impossible to catch even a fraction of them in a single photo.

Liz Celeste/Special to SFGATE

Once you’re inside the quarry, though, you realize there are hundreds of rock stacks, all of varying heights, shapes, and sizes — and they’re in every direction, covering nearly every square foot. They’re in trees, they’re on boulders, they’re 50 feet in the air on the side of the hollowed out limestone cliff and they’re in swirling designs in the middle of the space. There are ones next to both make-shift fairy houses, and clearly-bought-on-Etsy fairy houses, ones at the bases of trees and ones next to intricately built stick forts that look like the perfect place for an epic G.I. Joe action figure adventure.

I try to take picture after picture of this place (to show my wife, to show my kids, to show my dogs — I just want to show someone this place), and none of them do justice to what this looks like in person. There aren’t words to describe what it feels like to stand in the middle of this quarry, even for someone whose job it is to find the words.

And just when I’m finally able to start moving again, I notice, sandwiched between nearly every one of the piles of stones, is a note.

One of the many notes sandwiched in between rocks at the quarry behind The Pogonip lime kiln.

One of the many notes sandwiched in between rocks at the quarry behind The Pogonip lime kiln.

Liz Celeste/Special to SFGATE

Are these notes here for a reason? Why are they between the rocks? Am I supposed to leave a note?

Goosebumps running up the backs of my legs, I resist the urge to move any rocks and peek at one of them. You don’t stick a note that’s meant to be read between two stones, I decide. But after passing hundreds of stacks in an experience that feels akin to strolling through some sort of combination of a graveyard and the Louvre, there are enough oversized pieces of paper that you can read bits and pieces of them.

And they all have messages of hope, love or wonder.

They are messages written to the universe, to people’s future selves and to everyone in between.

Oh, forgot to mention, there are lots, and lots of painted rocks, too.

Oh, forgot to mention, there are lots, and lots of painted rocks, too.

Liz Celeste/Special to SFGATE

If you’ve ever been in a car accident before, right after another car makes impact with yours, there’s this moment where your entire body goes into shock. You can feel the entire thing tingling, pain rushing to every corner of your person.

This felt like that. Except without any of the pain.

Love you, too.

Love you, too.

Liz Celeste/Special to SFGATE

I walk through the quarry in the same way I walk through my 2-year-old’s bedroom after she’s asleep — long, exaggerated, absolutely silent steps, making sure with every stride I don’t accidentally knock a single thing over. I find a nice serene corner and pull out my notebook and pen to jot something down.

Dear universe,

Thanks for this place. Looking forward to finding more like it.

Grant Marek

I pull out my phone to find out what the date is. It’s 1/21/2021. And, I swear on my kids’ lives (you can ask our photographer because I immediately blurted this out to her when I saw it), it’s exactly 1:21 p.m.

I do the only thing I can: stick my note between two rocks, and just stay, for as long as I can.

The only thing that bothers the notes sandwiched between rocks and trees is the rain.

The only thing that bothers the notes sandwiched between rocks and trees is the rain.

Liz Celeste/Special to SFGATE

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I text photos and video to a dozen people when I’m finally out of the preserve, and then email the city of Santa Cruz Parks and Rec to ask them for literally anything they can tell me about this magical rock garden.

Travis Beck, the superintendent of parks, doesn’t know when people started stacking rocks here. The internet doesn’t seem to know either. While this place is definitely not a secret (I find little blurbs about it on SantaCruz.org, a Santa Cruz weekly, and a Santa Cruz surf magazine) none of them make any mention of how or why this place started.

I guess that piece stays a secret, between whoever started it and, well, the universe.

The Pogonip is open sunrise to 4 p.m. during the winter and sunrise to 7 p.m. in the summer. Here’s a trail map, which has the lime kiln clearly marked on it on the northwestern side of the map. For more on the preserve, plus where to park, head here.



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