Henry Miller once wrote that it was in Big
Sur, the wild central coast of California, where he first learned to say
“amen.” I had the same experience about two years ago when I accidentally
stumbled upon Big Sur’s lush mountains and rocky coastline and intense blue waters,
its unrivaled meeting of land and sea.
The Big Sur coastline. |
In August 2010, I left New York on my third
transcontinental train trip, my second one alone after being shown the ropes on
a weeklong trip with my father in 2005. The final stop on my itinerary, after a
few days in Denver and San Francisco, was Monterey, which I really had no other
incentive to visit other than the fact that it was there. About 100 miles south
of San Francisco, Monterey is a relatively small town of 30,000, which owes its
outsized renown to its celebrated aquarium and its designated mascot, John
Steinbeck.
I took a train and a few buses into town
and stayed at the international hostel a few blocks from Cannery Row. In the
morning, I rented a bike—the kind of luxury these shorter trips allowed me
that, on a four-month trip, are no longer available—and started out along the
bike path around the peninsula towards the 17-mile drive. In Carmel, I heard that
there was a Monterey-Salinas Transit bus running south into Big Sur, and that
it allowed you to store bikes for the ride. I bought a few sandwiches and
hitched my bike to the front of the bus. On the way down, while struggling to
peer down every canyon, to watch the waves crash on the craggy shore,
occasionally pushing my eyeballs back into my head, I spoke at length with the
bus driver, who told me about his kids and his ambitions, and gave me
recommendations about what to see in Big Sur. Mostly, he just endorsed the
advice of a newsletter I had picked up: the best thing to do in Big Sur is to
“do nothing.”
He dropped me at the picture-perfect Bixby
Canyon Bridge, and told me to bike up the old coastal road, which fell into
disuse and disrepair since being replaced by Highway 1 in the 1930s. It winds
in and out of the canyons and over and around the mountains which the new road
bypasses with its lovely newfangled bridges. The scenery was stunning: the
canyon opening up, the road ascending, redwoods lording over all. The road
proved too rough, though, and soon my ogling was interrupted by a final rupture
somewhere in my bicycle. Sweaty, dirty, and dehydrated, I had to lift the lifeless
bike almost three miles down the mountains and wait on a ledge overlooking the
Bixby Bridge while my friend the bus driver finished his route further south.
Back in Monterey, I somehow skirted the bike store clerk’s admonitions that I
wasn’t supposed to bring the bike into the mountains, and convinced him to give
me a free bike the next day.
I was more prepared this time, and picked
up the bus in downtown Monterey. Following the driver’s new advice, I finally took
the bus past the Bixby Bridge—around the curve in the road that I had seen
hundreds of cars and RVs take the day before as I sat helpless at the bridge,
hoping someday to make it past that curve and into the promised land. I picked
up a sandwich again at the deli in the town of Big Sur and biked downhill to
Andrew Molera State Park, where the Big Sur river flows into the Pacific. I
spent that day frolicking on the beach and on a little cliff extending into the
ocean. There was a large rock sticking straight out of the ocean in front of the
cliff, and on it was a group of tiny grey birds, one by one lifting themselves
into the strong winds and landing back on the rock. They seemed to be learning
how to fly.
Eventually, I lifted myself off that cliff
and reconciled myself with leaving Big Sur only by promising that I’d
eventually return. Though I slept in Monterey all three nights, I had basically
commuted to Big Sur both days. The next morning I took a bus to Salinas,
explored the excellent museum at the National Steinbeck Center, and then a
final train to L.A.
I thought a lot about Big Sur after that
trip, and Brahna was basically right in her last post that I have been chewing
her ear off about it since the beginning. The day after taping Jeopardy in L.A.,
my parents and I retreated to Sequoia National Park to decompress. I flew from
Fresno, where I’m writing this now, to Montreal, and the next night
participated in my first meeting as an editor for the McGill Tribune. Brahna, who was also an editor,
had just arrived in Montreal from New York, and the rest, of course, is
history. Anyway, Big Sur remained in my mind as nothing less than the place where
I first learned to say “amen.”
Waiting at the Bixby Canyon Bridge, August 2010. |
The Kirk Creek Campground was built in the 1930s to house
prisoners from San Quentin who were
hired to build Highway 1 for 35 cents per day. The fact that it is part of Los Padres National Forest and also on a 100-foot bluff directly over the Pacific Ocean tells you all you need to know about the amazing land-and-sea combination of the Big Sur coastline. The view from our site, across the little campground road from those directly on the edge of the cliff, was of the highway hugging the rugged coastline for miles to the south, and of the ocean reaching to the horizon in the west.
hired to build Highway 1 for 35 cents per day. The fact that it is part of Los Padres National Forest and also on a 100-foot bluff directly over the Pacific Ocean tells you all you need to know about the amazing land-and-sea combination of the Big Sur coastline. The view from our site, across the little campground road from those directly on the edge of the cliff, was of the highway hugging the rugged coastline for miles to the south, and of the ocean reaching to the horizon in the west.
We wanted to go on a nice hike in the mountains or along the coast, but, needing lunch supplies, decided first to drive down Highway 1 to that Big Sur deli of my memories. Then, driving back north, we stopped at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, or, rather, in a small pull-out beyond the park entrance, so as to skip the absurd $10 entry fee. The draw there is McWay Falls, billed somewhat falsely as the only waterfall in the U.S. that flows directly into the ocean. It actually used to flow directly in the ocean, until a 1983 landslide a few hundred feet up the coast brought tons of sediment into the cove, creating the pristine beach onto which the waterfall now falls 80-something feet before then running into the sea. For what it’s worth, the massive scar from the landslide, which cut through Highway 1, is visible from a spot in the park which has the remains of a cabin built by Julia Pfeiffer Burns and her husband, whose respective families were some of the first white inhabitants of Big Sur in the early 20th century. Of course, I found the idea of having a house right there on the coast, especially before all the modern traps and conveniences, absolutely tantalizing.
McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. |
We continued driving back south, intending
to spend the afternoon hiking some trails which led into the mountains across
the road from our campground. Before leaving, thanks to the advice of Brahna’s
extremely outdoors-minded brother-in-law, Asher, we had bought rainproof
clothing so as to stay relatively dry while hiking. We had to reconsider these
plans, however, as the buckets of rain suddenly turned into sheets of sleet and
then pellets of hail pummeling our car. Instead, after pulling into the campsite,
we sat in the car and watched, appropriately enough, a classic noir film
called, “Detour.” It is one of several noir movies included in a box set my
father was given awhile ago and never particularly liked. I don’t really know
why, but I brought the box along as the only DVDs we’d have for this trip.
Brahna and I have intended to watch “Detour” since the beginning of our trip,
but had to continually postpone our plans after one or the other of us
protested out of fear. The plot description on the box said it was about a
hitchhiker whose benefactor-du-jour suddenly dies on the road. The hitchhiker,
knowing he’ll be accused of murder, disposes of the body and takes the man’s
clothes and car, assuming his identity. Later, down the road, he picks up a
female hitchhiker who suddenly turns to him and says, “What did you do with the
body?” I had repeated that line, in a hushed voice, to Brahna so incessantly
that neither of us, whether in a motel or a campground, thought we could handle
it. We decided to watch it that day in Big Sur only because it was daytime and
because we presumed no shady characters would dare to be outside in such dreadful
weather. “Detour” turned out not to be scary at all, but, like all noirs,
comically overwrought and nonsensical. As the film entered its final scenes,
the rain stopped slapping at our windows, and we got anxious to start hiking.
We found the trail surprisingly sunny, and
cached our rain gear and fleeces in a bush. As we climbed higher and higher,
our view of the coast widened to include many series of crags and promontories
to the north and south. When we finally turned back due to lack of water, we
actually ran part of the way down the trail, luxuriating in the cool sea breeze
and the clean air. Back in the campground, we decided to relax and read for the
rest of the afternoon, instead of investigating a road heading east into the
mountains that seemed to promise great scenery. That choice seemed ratified
when our neighbors across the street—it’s funny how campgrounds often mimic
civilized society—invited us to bring our chairs to their campsite, one of
those abutting the cliff’s edge, to watch the sunset. Gale and Deanne
Sandholm of Helena, Montana, were excellent hosts, lending us their binoculars
to spot the distant spouts of grey whales migrating north. The sun set too
quickly, as always, and Brahna and I excused ourselves to make a fire to save
ourselves from the sudden cold. The Sandholms, who seemed to be in their 60s,
retired to their mini-RV. Rather, they went “inside,” as Deanne put it, and as
Brahna and I repeated to each other throughout the cold, and then rainy, night.
Brahan, the morning we left Kirk Creek campground. |
We took advantage of another brief dry
window the next morning to disassemble the tent and pack up the car. We drove
back up Highway 1 and into the same Andrew
Molera State Park which I biked into almost two years ago. We hiked out to the
cliff extending into the ocean, in front of the rock that still had birds on
it, and ate our lunch and braved the wind, and I resolved for the second
time on that spot, though now certainly with more truth and feeling and
companionship, that I couldn’t possibly be happier.
Molera Point, April 2012. |
The Big Sur River was flooded with spring
rains, so we couldn’t cross it to get to the beach. Instead, we drove north on Highway
1 towards Monterey, leaving Big Sur with heads turned around and promises to
return, not knowing then how soon that return would be.
We stopped in Carmel, the
artists-colony-turned-BoBo-heaven just below Monterey, to explore the Point
Lobos State Preserve. At the beginning of a trail down to the ocean, I passed a
sign warning hikers to avoid poison oak. It had a picture of the shiny leaves.
Just a short way down the trail, I accidentally brushed my leg against
precisely those shiny leaves, and a few yards later did it again. I told
Brahna, “I just brushed against poison oak, I’m going to break out in a rash.”
Sure enough, later that night, my left forearm developed a seven-inch long
bubbly, blistery rash, so swollen it prevented the entire arm from bending
properly. It has since opened and cracked several times, but seems to finally
be on its way out.
Our home for the night was one of our
characteristically awful motels, though we did enjoy our first showers in quite
a while. We decamped the next morning to a café on Cannery Row, to do some
careers and trip research, and then drove out to the ocean to watch the massive
waves that came after the storm earlier in the week. The next day in Salinas I
worked in a café while Brahna explored the Steinbeck museum, which I still
remembered from my last trip. We spent the afternoon driving south through the
Salinas Valley, stopping for lunch in Soledad, which, like most towns in the
area, is almost entirely populated by Mexicans. After another stop at a grocery
in King City, a town that features prominently Steinbeck’s East of Eden, we headed west on a small road into the mountains. We
were going back to Big Sur, our exile having lasted all of two days.
Sometime in the course of the research I’d
done in Monterey and Salinas, I discovered that there are two remote National Forest
campgrounds in the mountains above Big Sur, accessible only by driving 10 miles
east from Highway 1 or 30 miles west from King City on the Nacimiento-Ferguson
Road, itself the only road, besides Highway 1, out of Big Sur. That road,
coincidentally, is the same road into the mountains that Brahna and I nearly
explored the day we watched “Detour” in the car and went on a hike once the
rain cleared up. Driving into the mountains, through a massive military base,
we enjoyed the idea of having made a complete loop in the last few days. We set
up camp not ten miles from the Kirk Creek campground above the ocean, and even
drove nearly all the way back there, through a thick redwood grove and along
the unguarded edge of some pretty serious coastal canyons, for a glorious
sunset. Our view of the coast this time was even wider than it had been on our
hike. We saw our old campsite occupied by a new tent, the site of our friends,
the Sandholms, occupied by yet another mobile home.
Our site in the mountains was one of
only two in the eight-site campground occupied that night. The creek rambling
and murmuring just a few feet away was a pleasing lullaby, but it also
obstructed my usual paranoid observations of the sounds of the night. That uncertainty,
plus the cool mountain air and my mangled left arm, made it a difficult night.
We broke camp later than expected the next morning and finally did leave Big
Sur, with heads turned around and promises to return.
really ? somehow you haven't mentioned the poison oak arm to us
ReplyDeletewell written - can sense the beauty
Mom