Since 2009
A neighborhood watch for the park
Garrapata is the northernmost of Big Sur's state parks — almost three thousand acres tucked against the Santa Lucia Range, about six and a half miles south of Carmel on Highway 1. It runs from the wind-bent headlands at Soberanes Point up through redwood canyon and a valley that fills with calla lilies every late winter. There's no big entrance sign, no kiosk, no ranger booth. Just turnouts along the highway and a lot of people who love it.
Friends of Garrapata isn't an organization so much as a habit. It started with two neighbors who couldn't walk past a rotted plank or a tangle of cape ivy without wanting to fix it — and it grew into a loose network of folks who feel the same way.
Co-founder
Augie
Augie Keegan calls Garrapata “my church, my temple, my mosque.” In 2009 he started Friends of Garrapata so that looking after the park would feel like what it is to him: the price of admission to a place this good. He's a Carmel neighbor, and on any given week you might find him out on the Rocky Ridge Trail, swapping a worn boardwalk plank for lumber he cut at home.
His idea for the whole thing was simple, and he says it best: “a neighborhood watch, so everybody's in charge out here.”
[BRACKETED: a few more sentences in Augie's own voice if he'd like — a favorite morning on the trail, what keeps him at it after all these years, what he hopes neighbors take from the place.]
Co-founder
David
David Thiermann co-founded Friends of Garrapata with Augie in 2009 and has been his partner in the work ever since. Two people noticing the same things that needed doing, and deciding to just do them.
[BRACKETED: David's story in the family's words — how he and Augie came to the park, the corners he loves most, the quiet work he's proudest of. Keep it personal and specific; a single true detail is worth more than a paragraph of praise.]
How it grew
From two neighbors to a whole crew
There's no board here, no membership dues, no newsletter — just people who use the park taking turns caring for it. Word spread the way it does in a small coastal community: mostly through the Friends of Garrapata Facebook page, where the crew still trades work-day plans and photos from the morning. These days it's a few dozen regulars [BRACKETED: confirm — around 85?] who show up on their own impulse.
The work is unglamorous and steady: pulling invasive cape ivy out of Soberanes Creek so the native plants can breathe, tidying the bluff-top paths after a busy run of weekends, fixing a worn stretch of trail before someone turns an ankle on it. When the 2016 Soberanes Fire tore through the canyon and closed it for years, it was a hard thing to watch — and a reminder of why neighbors keep showing up for this place at all.
[BRACKETED: a paragraph of group history in your own words — projects you're proudest of over the years, a milestone or two, and where you hope the next decade goes. Names and dates welcome.]