The horrible washing sawing of Big Sur

Big Sur, California
Highway 1, just north of Garrapata Creek Bridge: 12 January 2019

So that when later I heard people say “Oh Big Sur must be beautiful!” I gulp to wonder why it has the reputation of being beautiful above and beyond its fearfulness, its Blakean groaning roughrock Creation throes, those vistas when you drive the coast highway on a sunny day opening up the eye for miles of horrible washing sawing.
Jack Kerouac—Big Sur (1962)

Big Sur is one of my favorite getaways. I got the chance for a solo trip last weekend and the toll taken by the elements on the area over the past couple of years limited what I had hoped to do. I drove down early Saturday morning before the crowds of tourists wind their way down Highway 1 and was able to hike some of the few open trails in the area. Many were closed from a combination of the Soberanes Fire of a couple of years ago and rain from last spring and this winter, a combination of a timeless, elemental flux.

Since so many of the trails and beaches I wanted to visit were closed, I decided to stop at a pullout in Garrapatas State Park and walk out to one of the vista points. I noticed on the way south earlier that morning that the state had improved many of the coastal access points and I wanted to take advantage of the development. As I walked across the highway and down the narrow trail toward the cliffs, a guy came running up to me and said, "My friend has just fallen. If you see anything in the water, please let us know." I didn't have time to respond before he was off, so I continued heading out toward the coast. The surf is captured in the above video, 12-15 foot waves with an occasional 20-footer. While there (for about 45 minutes), many rangers, firemen, lifeguards, and other rescue people showed up on the scene and positioned themselves to locate the fallen friend. Seeing the personnel go through the rescue drills was just as dispiriting as the individual event, realizing they had done this dozens of times before and had a protocol they instinctively followed in order to spot a body in the water. There are many articles online about the event, but I'll just link this one.

There are a few literary works that capture the area for me, my favorite being some of Robinson Jeffers' poems. Last week's encounter, however, reminded me more of Jack Kerouac in Big Sur. I've never consistently connected with Kerouac, but if I had to pick one work I liked the best it would be this short novel. If you haven't read it, Big Sur follows Kerouac a few years after On the Road had been published (and fourteen years after the events in the book) as he's trying to handle the fame of his book as well as his inability to control himself, especially with alcohol. Kerouac's mental deterioration coincides with his visits to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin in Big Sur. His isolation, exacerbated by the insignificance he feels in comparison to nature's power brings on a mental and physical breakdown. The poem he wrote while in Big Sur, "Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur," echoes the parts of the novel comparing man's transience to nature's permanence, one of the many tensions in the book such as image vs. reality and beauty vs. hazard.

There are parts of the novel that I have recalled when visiting the area, though, and last Saturday was one of those moments. The simultaneously exhibited beauty and fearfulness of the area had never been on clearer display.

View north of Big Sur coastline, 12 January 2019
Just south of Bixby Creek Bridge

Monterey stop

Stevenson House / French House where Robert Louis Stevenson stayed while in Monterey, California
Picture source

Last summer I posted on visiting Robert Louis Stevenson State Park and the memorial commemorating his stay there as detailed in The Silverado Squatters. The hike up to the top of Mt. Saint Helena provides one of the best views I've seen of the surrounding wine country. As I found out then, Stevenson had quite the stay in California. If you find yourself in the Monterey area, you can visit the house he stayed in while waiting for his future wife's divorce to be final. Yeah, it's complicated.

You can read about his stay in the area in his chapter "The Old Pacific Capital" from Across the Plains: With Other Memories and Essays .

The Bay of Monterey has been compared by no less a person than General Sherman to a bent fishing-hook; and the comparison, if less important than the march through Georgia, still shows the eye of a soldier for topography. Santa Cruz sits exposed at the shank; the mouth of the Salinas river is at the middle of the bend; and Monterey itself is cosily ensconced beside the barb. Thus the ancient capital of California faces across the bay, while the Pacific Ocean, though hidden by low hills and forest, bombards her left flank and rear with never-dying surf. In front of the town, the long line of sea-beach trends north and north-west, and then westward to enclose the bay. The waves which lap so quietly about the jetties of Monterey grow louder and larger in the distance; you can see the breakers leaping high and white by day; at night, the outline of the shore is traced in transparent silver by the moonlight and the flying foam; and from all round, even in quiet weather, the distant, thrilling roar of the Pacific hangs over the coast and the adjacent country like smoke above a battle.

Be sure to contact the State Park number ahead of time to find out when tours of the Stevenson House will take place—you'll want to see the inside of the house and the Stevenson exhibits as well as wander the grounds. While in the area, be sure to visit some of the other literary-related places I've mentioned in previous posts. Robinson Jeffers' Tor House, in nearby Carmel, is a favorite of mine. Further down the road is the Henry Miller Memorial Library.

I have not mentioned bookstores much, but I'll begin to correct that here. Within a block of The Stevenson House are two bookstores that require plenty of your time if you like browsing used books. The Old Capitol Books has plenty of full, tall shelves, the high ceilings with fans lend an open air to the place even though you're dwarfed in the stacks. The quality and range of books call for extended browsing. The nearby Carpe Diem Fine Books is quite a different store: believe them when they say they have a "special emphasis on the history and literature of California and the West." There were several beautiful old sets I would love to have, but I'll need to save up for those purchases. Thanks to Cynthia Haven for providing information on this shop.

A Grand Day Out

"Sightseeing is the art of disappointment."
Robert Louis Stevenson (incorrect in this instance) in The Silverado Squatters

Left side:
This tablet placed by
the Club Women of Napa
County marks the site
of the cabin occupied in
1880 by
Robert Louis Stevenson
and bride while he wrote
The Silverado Squatters.

Right side:
"Doomed to know not Winter
only Spring, a being trod
the flowery April
blithely for a while
took his fill of music,
joy of thought and seeing
came and stayed and went
nor ever ceased to smile."
RLS

See In Memoriam F.A.S. for the source of the quote.
Also see the California landmarks page for additional pictures.

On Saturday I headed to Napa Valley to explore some sights related to Robert Louis Stevenson. The first stop was the Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, the site where he lived as detailed in The Silverado Squatters. The Toll House used to be where the picnic area is located.

A perfect place for croquet, as Stevenson noted. A short hike takes you to the location of the office/bunkhouse that Steveson and his wife "squatted" in during the spring and summer of 1880. The rock wall where the structure stood still looks imposing.

Stevenson mentioned the wind quite a bit in his book, noting that the area below this ridge would escape the occasional gale. I noticed that the wind increased markedly as the day warmed up. The opening to the abandoned mine lies across a clearing and up a steep hill.

The scene of this little book is on a high mountain. There are, indeed, many higher; there are many of a nobler outline. It is no place of pilgrimage for the summary globe-trotter; but to one who lives upon its side, Mount Saint Helena soon becomes a centre of interest. It is the Mont Blanc of the California Coast Range, none of its near neighbours rising to one-half its altitude. It looks down on much green intricate country. ... Its naked peak stands nearly four thousand five hundred feet above the sea; its sides are fringed with forest; and the soil, where it is bare, glows warm with cinnabar.
...
And there was something satisfactory in the sight of that great mountain that enclosed us to the north: whether it stood, robed in sunshine, quaking to its topmost pinnacle with the heat and brightness of the day; or whether it set itself to weaving vapours, wisp after wisp growing, trembling, fleeting, and fading in the blue. ... She over-towered them [foothills] by two-thirds of her own stature. She excelled them by the boldness of her profile. Her great bald summit, clear of trees and pasture, a cairn of quartz and cinnabar, rejected kinship with the dark and shaggy wilderness of lesser hill-tops.

- (from the opening paragraph of The Silverado Squatters and the final paragraphs of Part I, Chapter 1)

I continued on the trail and hiked to the top of the north peak of Mt. Saint Helena, which provided spectacular views of Napa Valley and the surrounding area. The day had heated up quite a bit when I reached the top, so there is plenty of haze in this picture.

The change of view due to the heat is apparent when comparing the above picture and this one, taken 90 minutes earlier, from a couple of miles south and a thousand feet lower.

In The Silverado Squatters Stevenson describes a memorable scene of the valley covered by sea fog, the nearby lesser peaks looking like islands. It was, he said, "as though I had gone to bed the night before, safe in a nook of inland mountains, and had awakened in a bay upon the coast." For anyone that has seen such a roiling of fog in this area you can overlay that image on these peaks to the south.

More details on the hike can be found here. If you're in the area and want a short outing, I recommend the hike to the memorial and mine area. For anyone deciding to do the full hike, feel free to contact me for additional information that will help.

After the hike, I headed to St. Helena for a look at the Robert Louis Stevenson Silverado Museum. While not large, the museum has plenty of information on Stevenson's life and family, not restriced to his stay in the area. Many thanks to Dorothy Mackay-Collins for providing a wonderful tour of the exhibits. Thanks are also due to Ian Wolcott of The New Psalmanazar for clueing me in to the existence of the museum. For more information on Stevenson's time in California, see this page.

Afterwards there were other sights to see. Rumor has it Napa Valley has more to offer than just hiking and museums.

And perhaps the most curious feature of the whole matter is this: that we should have dwelt in this quiet corner of the mountains, with not a dozen neighbours, and yet struggled all the while, like desperate swimmers, in this sea of falsities and contradictions. Wherever a man is, there will be a lie.
- From The Silverado Squatters, after Stevenson helps in the jumping of a claim

Tor House

View of Tor House and Hawk Tower from Scenic Drive, Carmel, California
(click for bigger picture)

I really enjoyed my tour of Robinson Jeffers’ Tor House on Friday. The setting was perfect--a storm was working its way toward shore--to admire Jeffers' handiwork and his poems. So while I'm back at work and have to clean up after someone broke into our offices, I'll take a break and read one of his poems to escape back to his house and the following drive along the Big Sur coast.

Tor House
If you should look for this place after a handful
of lifetimes:
Perhaps of my planted forest a few
May stand yet, dark-leaved Australians or the coast
cypress, haggard
With storm-drift; but fire and the axe are devils.
Look for foundations of sea-worn granite, my fingers
had the art
To make stone love stone, you will find some remnant.
But if you should look in your idleness after ten
thousand years:
It is the granite knoll on the granite
And lava tongue in the midst of the bay, by the mouth
of the Carmel
River-valley, these four will remain
In the change of names. You will know it by the wild
sea-fragrance of wind
Though the ocean may have climbed or retired a little;
You will know it by the valley inland that our sun
and our moon were born from
Before the poles changed; and Orion in December
Evenings was strung in the throat of the valley like
a lamp-lighted bridge.
Come in the morning you will see white gulls
Weaving a dance over blue water, the wane of the moon
Their dance-companion, a ghost walking
By daylight , but wider and whiter than any bird in
the world.
My ghost you needn't look for; it is probably
Here, but a dark one, deep in the granite, not
dancing on wind
With the mad wings and the day moon.

The view (from just below Tor House) to the southwest toward Point Lobos

(Update 9 Dec 2011): For more on Jeffers and the compilation by the Stanford Press, see this article.

Friday dreaming

My wife will attend a seminar in Monterey Friday, so I'm taking the day off to tag along for the fun of it. While I don't have firm plans there are many things I love doing in the Big Sur / Carmel / Monterey area, of which I'm sure I'll include these two:

Robinson Jeffers' Tor House and Hawk Tower
Picture source

It has been at least ten years since I last toured Robinson Jeffers' Tor House. While enjoying much of his work, his poem "The Bed by the Window" had never really moved me until I stood in the guest room and looked out of that window by that bed:

I chose the bed downstairs by the sea-window for a good death-bed
When we built the house; it is ready waiting,
Unused unless by some guest in a twelvemonth, who hardly suspects
Its latter purpose. I often regard it,
With neither dislike nor desire; rather with both, so equalled
That they kill each other and a crystalline interest
Remains alone. We are safe to finish what we have to finish;
And it will sound rather like music
When the patient daemon behind the screen of sea-rock and sky
Thumps his staff, and calls thrice: "Come, Jeffers."

The other stop, just down Highway 1, is the Henry Miller Memorial Library:

Picture source

The only two books of Miller's that I have read and enjoyed were Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch and The Books in My Life. Yet when I can I always stop at the little library that bears his name, not for the bookshop or memorabilia but to enjoy the atmosphere and nearby views of the Big Sur coastline. So despite the forecast for rain, I'm planning on a grand day out. That evening look for the guy, just in from hiking, in the hotel bar enjoying the view and reading Baroja.

I'll end with The Answer from Jeffers:

Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.