The Torrey Pines Cave Man
A wild ride with a hermit
Ok so I read the memoir I talked about in this post and I am here today to tell you all about it.
Here’s the cover:
The cave man’s name is Nick Connell
He was married and divorced 3x
He was an atheist but then he “consulted 254 denominations” and concluded that Mormonism is the only “viable” religion
After his third divorce, his ex-wife told him to go live in a cave so he did (this was a boyhood dream)
He dug the cave first with just a Bowie knife and a screwdriver
He found the place to make the cave because he fell due to a bum knee. When he fell, his bad knee hit a boulder and was then cured. The crevice where he fell became the site of his cave.
That night, he had a religious experience where he met an entity called The Owner who told him he could build his cave there.”I FELT ABSOLVED OF THE FACTOR OF TRESPASS!” Nick writes.
Later, he had another religious experience where a powerful wind separated him from his sleeping bag and clothes and was about to separate him from his temple garment, but he hung on to it, and the temple garment turned into a sail and he was raised into the air and given commandments by another entity called The Man. He forgot the commandments but The Man said that was OK and they would be revealed to him again later.
Neither The Man nor The Owner are God.
The cave had a bed, storage shelves, multiple rooms, and paintings.
He began the cave in 1971, and the “inner chamber” was completed in 1985.
None of the park service people knew about the cave until 1986
He received 300 visitors a month from around the world.
Visitors were constantly amazed by the cave and it cured at least one woman’s depression. At the cave, its visitors have religious experiences and are “captivated” by it.
The cave was sealed off by cement in 1991.
Toward the end of the cave’s life, Nick spent a good portion of the year in New Hampshire, where he regularly wrote for the newspaper and participated in local community issues.
He competed in power-lifting competitions and was a correspondent for Black Belt Magazine (about karate). One of his articles for this magazine was about a suspicious drug bust (I got confused at this point in the manuscript).
This is not a memoir, but a document explaining why the cave is significant and should not be closed off. Nick has spoken about The Owner before, but this manuscript is the first time he has spoken about The Man.
Here is with the cave.
