Faith... and Fire
In the novel, The Stranger in Big Sur, Lillian Bos Ross called Big
Sur “a state of mind,” a comment often repeated here. This is in
part a tribute to the inspirational impact of Big Sur’s geology, which is
complex even by California
standards, a medley of volcanic debris, sea floors, old mountain ranges from
far to the south, rocks from the Sierra and all over, descending and rising
from the earth’s magma in the on-going tectonic tango. Further complicating
things are active fault lines and something called an “accretionary wedge,”
essentially a large bump pushed up when the Pacific plate dove under the
continental one, forming much of California’s
coast but nowhere as dramatically as here.
The Santa Lucias may be less than
6,000 feet in elevation, but the ocean breaks on near-vertical slopes that
capture all the moisture, some of it in legendary fogs, making of the coastal
creases giant, lush terrariums and leaving the interior hot and dry. That, too,
is part of Big Sur, although unseen by most
visitors and residents. The ridge between the coast range and the backcountry
is attainable only by several hours of difficult hiking, or by driving the dirt
road that winds up from behind the Ventana Inn, through half a dozen locked
gates maintained by the U.S. Forest Service which owns most of it. The view
from the top includes massive green headlands sunk claw-like in deep blue
water, and ocean and sky meeting in a distant cloud bank.
“Big Sur’s
all about the mountains and the ocean,” says Bruce Emmons, a 30-year veteran of
the Forest Service, “and the interface of the two.” He pulls his SUV to a stop,
while off to the left eight condors lazily ride thermals fed by a relentless
sun. “By definition, it’s everything south from the Carmel
highlands to San Simeon,” 70-odd miles of coastline and just 340,000 of the 2
million acres that comprises the Los
Padres National
Forest, including the Ventana wilderness on the
eastern side of this ridge.
Part of Emmons’ job is lubricating
agreements allowing the government to acquire additional property and thus
remove it from the possibility of development. In 2002 he participated in a
controversial land deal that transferred 1,200 acres of the old Brazil Ranch
near Bixby Bridge,
the spectacular northern gateway to Big Sur,
to public ownership, providing the FS access to the ocean and forestalling
plans for a hotel and condos. But a prime concern of today’s 1,500 coastal
residents is that just such land acquisitions by the feds will turn this coast
into another Yosemite and them into fauna to
be gawked at by tourists.
Some 500,000 acres in and around
Big Sur are already protected by either ownership by the FS, the Bureau of Land
Management, state parks, and the University of California Natural Reserve
System, or by easements on large pieces of private property and federal and
state regulations regarding coastal areas. Decades of conflict over just what Big Sur should be has resulted in some rare compromises
among government agencies and local interest groups. “The people here are all
highly individual,” said Emmons, who wore his institutional green lightly.
“They love us and they hate us.”
He produced an excerpt from the
agency’s management plan for the Los Padres, and said, “Read this.” The plan emphasizes
Big Sur as “an overall visual and cultural
impression of landscapes attributes… that gives it an identity and ‘sense of
place’” to be maintained “for its internationally valued scenic beauty and
biodiversity… Management will be particularly sensitive to the fragility of the
unstable landscape and the commingling of terrestrial and marine ecosystems.”
That may all sound sensible, but
for the Forest Service it was near revolutionary. Instead of concentrating on
timber, minerals, graze, and other extractable resources at any cost, as the
agency does elsewhere else in America,
it has moderated its procedures here and broken new ground in taking care of
its terrain.
Big Sur is the only national forest
fronting the Pacific, but unique in other ways, too, a congeries of additional
government and philanthropic jurisdictions – the California Coastal
Conservancy, the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District, the Big Sur Land
Trust, the Nature Conservancy, active members of the Sierra Club and other
watchdog groups, and local boards and entities. They are all devoted to
maintaining the status quo and by common consent gather regularly to air
differences and potential land use problems.
In addition, an alliance of
spiritual stakeholders met four times a year to discuss the environmental
integrity of this view-shed: Esalen, the Esselen Tribe of Monterey
County in Carmel
Valley, the New Camaldoli Hermitage of
Catholic monks outside Lucia, and Tassajara, in the heart of the Ventana
wilderness, the first Zen monastery founded in the United States. Tassajara takes in
paying travelers, trains monks, and brings its own brand of enlightenment to
some of the nation’s oldest land use problems. All four institutions were in
fact stories in their own right, and such an assemblage of stewards could be
found only in Big Sur.
Driving back down the road, Emmons added,
“Local people like the idea of protecting the land, but they oppose any plans
to change things.”
He wore a drab tunic and a blue
ball cap. Intense blue eyes never waver. His name was David Zimmerman and
although raised in a Mennonite family in the Midwest,
he’s the director of a unique, ambitious spiritual enterprise purposefully set
in the figurative middle of nowhere. Tassajara - the Esselen word for “the
place where meat dries” - attempts to combine the fundamentals of monastic life
with the periodic satisfaction of lay desire for a spattering of enlightenment.
About 5,000 guests descend the
rattling dirt road in spring and summer, drawn by the beauty and remoteness of
the Big Sur’s backcountry, the hot
springs, and the unavoidable spiritual ambiance. But
in winter the monastery enfolds upon itself, the zendo full of committed monks
without distraction, the dark mornings filled with meditation, the sound of
chanting, and the thwok of the hammer
against the wooden han calling them to meals. “It gets in your blood,” said
Zimmerman.
There were student monks as well.
One, age 26, gave up college and a career in photography to become a Buddhist,
leaving the farmland of Minnesota
and a Catholic upbringing to join the Buddhist noviate. She, too, had an easy
smile and a kind of steely considerateness. “I studied Zen and achido in
college,” she said, “and meditated. It was the first time I had thought about
how I was thinking,” and that was the end of photography career. “Now I’m
profoundly grateful for all this space. We’re mindful of how we have to take
care of it. After being here for almost two years I’m thankful also that I’m
not driven to get the latest computer or whatever.”
Guests have their
own protocols to follow: no talking in the baths; line up for dinner at 6:45; don’t intrude on the special
sessions for those on retreat. At 8:30 in the evening the striking of the han
called the willing to meditation in the dimly lit zendo, where a monk with a
clipboard assigned everyone to a position facing the wall. The whisper of bare
feet on creaking floorboards was the only sound, followed by light bell
strikes, then silence. Within your solitude are unspoken responsibilities:
don’t fidget or sigh, focus for 40 minutes until the tapping of a drum and
bells signal that meditation has ended. Outside, the night was dark, cold, and
exhilarating.
Douglas and Anna
were two life coaches from San Rafael who were
staying at Tassajara half price, chopping vegetables – “lots of onions” – in
the mornings to make up the difference, and in the afternoons swimming nude in
the gin-clear water of the Narrows on
Tassajara Creek, or percolating in the bathhouse. They considered the
experience both fun, and instructive. “There’s a lot of talk about proper knife
use,” says Anna. “For instance, you don’t drag the cut onions across the board
with the blade, which dulls it, but use a kind of spatula.” When the couple
heard a bucket being dropped accidentally one morning, they turned to each
other and said, “More onions.”
Carmel
to San Simeon may be the official designation of Big Sur, but the two extremes
– Carmel’s pastel bungalows, and the ornate
Hearst mansion - differ markedly from each other, and from Big
Sur’s center. Geographically speaking, that’s Partington Creek,
five miles south of Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn. It runs into the ocean near a tunnel
dug in the late 19th century through one side of the canyon, to
provide access to a narrow harbor. There, in a heaving sea of kelp, tanbark was
loaded onto ships for transport. Today the only users are tourists clambering
over rocks in search of black turban snails, hermit crabs, and resplendent
ochre seastars exposed by the falling tide.
The road leading
up to Partington Ridge resembled a wobbly rocket trajectory rising steeply from
Highway 1 through coastal scrub - manzanita and yellow-blooming chemise. Those
locals in little houses hidden away behind stands of madrone and live oaks,
some with vintage pickups, VW busses or Airstreams in the yards, were reluctant
to come out and direct lost strangers. Nowadays the residents are less likely
to be counter-cultural than newly rich from the real estate, venture capital,
and other California booms, but many are long-term residents who have adapted
to changing times.
A few big vegetable gardens were
testament to their self-reliance, although “there are fewer of those now,” says
Jean Alexander, blonde and suntanned, carrying a basket of vegetables just
picked by her and her 10-year-old son, Ryan. He had hair to his shoulders and a
welcoming smile. “It used to be that one person would grow tomatoes, another
would grow potatoes, and everyone would share. Now we have to be more
self-reliant.”
The Alexanders lived on the old
Angulo property. Her husband, Kevin, was in the process of expanding their
bright, airy house. A builder by trade, he was also the care-taker, a
traditional, coveted job in Big Sur that is scarce
now. Kevin grew up in Big Sur as part of an
itinerant family living out of a car, bathing free at the old Esalen, and
pursuing the proto-typical hippie existence. He remembered, with a laugh,
pouring cold water over his head in the mornings. “We liked to keep things
simple.”
A successful builder, Kevin belied
the notion that the off-spring of the ‘60s was somehow damaged, his life
conventional by most standards, and apparently happy despite the loss of old
chums. “The closest thing to community events these days is the softball games
at tk State Park every Monday,” where the Roadhousers took on the Nepenthe
Outlaws and other teams.
The main house on the lawn below,
made of concrete by The Old Coyote, had squat chimneys and big windows
overlooking the Pacific. A yurt sat on a platform out of sight, with an open-air
shower and a world-class toilet set between two majestic redwoods. Visitors slept
in the yurt and awoke to the call of the olive-sided flycatcher (quick, three beers…) and a blast of
light on opposing fields as morning sun cuts through a defile in the Santa
Lucias.
“The old Big
Sur values are dying off,” Jean went on. “Poets, artists and
beatniks used to live off the land. They could just squat on a place and write
a letter to the owner, who would write back and say, ‘Great. Just keep an eye
on it.’ Some new owners still buy property to be close to Big
Sur, but others move their old lives into the new
multi-million-dollar house, along with their staffs. The paradox is that rich
people provide some jobs for those who stayed.”
A nurse, she also did cliff rescue
for the Big Sur fire department, and some home
schooling. “The year book still says that the students were born on
such-and-such ridge. There was only one hospital birth in the class last year.”
But in recent years “we’ve lost fifty percent of the locals as people sell out
in the land boom. Most service jobs are done now by recently arrived Hispanics,
and their children make up more than half the primary school students.”
Both parents were thankful for a
place and a life for their children at odds with the American norm. “I see a
difference in the kids up here,” said Jean. “There’s no television, no mall, no
cell phone rut. They read a lot. They got a feel for the land that kids in town
don’t have. They’d dress up as Indians or something and frolic through the
garden, picking berries. They had a real childhood.”
Ryan made the all-star baseball
team, bitter-sweet because play-offs mean more hours on the road for everyone.
Her older son, Kyle, took the bus every morning at 5:50 to middle school in Carmel. “When he was born
the road was closed in 17 different places, because of the rain. It meant more
community because people would meet down there. They’d chat, and bring baking.
Now the road’s always kept open for Ventana and the Post Ranch Inn, and there’s
no down-time. We pray that the road gets closed.”
The following June, Mary Lou Torens
was working in a neighbor’s garden when “I saw the clouds rolling in from the
Pacific, lashed by electrical charges, darkest, scariest, most beautiful and “
knew what was coming.”
Kevin saw the first lightening
strike in that meadow across the canyon from their house. “It was the loudest
clap I ever heard. Immediately flames came up, and I called it in.”
Firefighters were soon battling the downhill creep of the fire, but during the
night it moved around the head of the canyon. “I cut some trees below the
Angulo place, to act as a fire break, but the heat was so intense it blaze
melted the gutters.”
Also spared was the Alexander’s residence,
and the house of Mary Lu Torens and her husband, Magnus, although tongues of
blackened earth licked at its borders, and the towering redwoods are singed at
the bases.
Contrary eastern winds that rise
most night in Big Sur brought the inferno down the mountain behind the town of Big Sur and environs.
Ventana was saved by the dumping of retardant and oceans water from planes and
helicopters, and the constant efforts of firefighters who were served cuisine
straight from the Ventana kitchen. Highway 1 acted as a natural fire break, so
the Post Ranch Inn and Esalen were unscathed. Nepenthe’s too survived, although
plate-sized embers fell on the deck, blown from across the road, extinguished
by those who stayed behind.
The fire lasted for days and burned
many acres and some houses, among them the Tin House above Partington Canyon,
built as a retreat for Franklyn Delanor Roosevelt, who never came. “But what I
regret most about this fire,” said Don McQueen, piloting his all-terrain
vehicle up a steep service road above his house, “is that the steepest canyons
were burned, which means massive mudslides when the rain comes, and the loss of
many redwoods.”
Down-slope, the eerie, ashen defile
was punctuated with blackened tree trunks of trees interspersed with the
beautiful deep red of those that survived. Some such trunks were singed but
whole, while others were charred at the base, with gaping caverns where the
fire got past the bark and created chimneys. Up-drafts fed by the heat below
scoured the insides and emerged as much as 40 feet above ground “like giant Bunsen
burners, so loud you couldn’t hear a person shouting.”
Since Highway 1 acted as a natural
fire break, the Post Ranch Inn, Nepenthes, and Esalen all survived with
relatively minor damage. In the back country, Tassajara lay in the path of
another lightening fire, and was saved by firefighters who wrapped the
buildings in fire retardant material. Also spared was the d’Angulo house, the Alexanders’
above it, Henry Miller’s old residence, and that of Mary Lu Torens and her
husband, Magnus, but tongues of blackened earth seem to lick at the borders of
their properties.
Meanwhile, the residents of
Partington ridge were laying in provisions for the fire’s aftermath: lentils,
brown rice, rye flour, powdered milk, gasoline. Some part of everyone up here
seems to look forward to a serene, if forced, winter isolation if the
consequences of the Basin Complex fire descend on Highway 1 in the form of
rain-fueled landslides. But they were optimistic. “Look,” said Mary Lu Torens,
pointing to a green redwood sprig on the scorched earth near her house. “New
growth’s already pushing through the ashes.”
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