Magical serendipity

Everyone has a personal tale or two about the road, and its role in the adventure of living in Big Sur. Mine is a story of serendipity.

Years and years ago, when I was a city-dweller, I would escape my cubicle and drive my little commuter car down Highway One to dip into the healing waters at Esalen, to hike steep mountains and dance on pristine beaches.

I'd drive up and down the highway, my arm stretched out the window, hand pressing against the wind. I would return to my city life restored, and perhaps just a little more present in my world.

A shutterbug, I snapped a shot of the often-photographed row of colorful mailboxes at the foot of Partington Ridge. A couple of years later I showed this picture to my fiancé, who'd been living on the Ridge the day I drove by. Tucked between the mailboxes was a bit of trash that he remembered picking up. Our paths had crossed -- him probably wishing he could scold the litterbug as I drove on down the highway, my camera holding an image of where my own mailbox would be some day.

Now I help others plan their escapes from the modern world to stay in the rustic time-capsule known as Deetjens Inn. As I speak with guests, I remember the fear and wonder we feel when we step into the unknown, even if it's only a 3 or 6 hour drive away. Our Inn guests are unique in their determination to have the experience Deetjens offers, of coming home to a more gracious, gentler world.

But magical serendipity, perhaps more abundant in Big Sur, does not protect us from the impermanence of life, whether we're meeting, almost meeting by accident, or parting ways. Last week our Deetjens community suffered a blow when the beloved Caroline Provost, who selected and arranged the Inn's fresh-cut flowers for over a decade, left us suddenly and too soon. She always gave her smiles and her love to us, and will be missed like nobody's business.

When we are surprised by the death of someone we love, the world tilts on its axis differently, as if a nuclear bomb had just detonated underground, changing the landscape we walk on forever. What can we do but send our prayers after the one who has gone ahead of us?

Caroline the Queen of the Flowers gave us a priceless parting gift: a deeper knowing of how little time we have, and how important it is to meet each other in the moment with all the love we have to give.

Mailboxes by Toby Rowland-Jones
Toby and Caroline in happier times --

The Wedding Tree

All right, I'll admit it, here's one of my secrets: I have a special, very feminine tree that I like to hug. It comforts me to tuck my head against her tree belly, and look up and down the coast, peeking out at the world as if from behind Mama, holding onto her skirts.

This small oak grows on the point below below us, on a finger of land forming the side of one of Partington's many small canyons. She's been festooned with prayer flags and slightly pruned for a nice trim shape. She's witnessed the words of lovers, sheltered sunset watchers, and been the subject of many mystical landscape paintings.

Big Sur's mountain ridges spread away from her to the north and south, her backdrop is the ever-changing ocean and sky. From under her branches, I feel a frisson of vertigo, as if I was a red-tailed hawk swooping down towards the sea.

Probably the most interesting (and most often commented on) aspect of the Wedding Tree is that if you look at her with soft eyes, she is in fact a woman, her torso plunged into the land, legs reaching up into the air. She has an upside down "muffin top" and a serious belly button. The question, as my painter friend wondered, is whether she is diving down into the earth, or jumping up out of it.

Maybe she's doing handsprings, leaping from ridge to ridge over the ages, or maybe she's an Esalen tribal princess, transformed into an oak in some ancient, indigenous fairy tale. Either way, she is our Tree Goddess.

One morning last week I woke up like the rest of the world: after listening to city sounds in my bed, I drank a cup of coffee, walked out onto the street, got in my car and drove to an office building, where I talked about the business world all day.

How blessed I felt when the very next morning, wearing only my bathrobe, cowboy hat and sturdy shoes, playing pied piper to my three eccentric cats (who go on walks with us) I began my day leaning against the Wedding Tree's warm tummy and soaking up the strength of her primeval thighs.

Quiet Days in Big Sur

The road is quiet. It has a stillness, like an empty stadium after a big game. One wants to walk slowly around its curves breathing deeply, stand in yoga poses at the vista points, and dance along the tops of the stone walls that stare down at the sea.

Without traffic (and there's been almost none at all this past week) Highway One invites contemplation. This quiet feeling permeates our daily lives right now. Perhaps the landscape's level of grandeur needs an empty stage to remind us of the solitude it lived in for so very, very long.

The ancient, enormous forces that shaped this land are more evident when we're shaken out of our daily routines. The road has a secret, which we are distracted from learning when it's busy with tourist traffic: this ribbon of road is the edge of the world as we know it.

Friday evening, as I drove home from the valley towards the ridge, my pickup truck was the only beast on the road for some ten miles. As I dimmed the headlights on the straightaways, the slopes of the cliffs transformed into sleeping animals, while pine trees loomed large along the asphalt trail. The flashes of darkness, then silver moonlight, recalled earlier times when night travel happened only when the moon was full.

Recently, Big Sur folks have made "border crossings" over the slide twice daily, a source of annoyance, but also of amusement and community. As the rains have slowed, people have reported enjoying a brisk morning walk beside their neighbors (even in an un-caffeinated state!) while helping each other push carts full of groceries back up and over the collapsed road in the afternoon.

Since the walkovers have been carefully timed, I learned a new expression in Spanish while driving my friend Mary to the bridge at 6:40 am: "Písale!" (meaning "Step on it!" ) she yelled over the roar of my truck careening through the Big Sur Valley at just over 60 mph. As I watched Mary walk towards the bend in the road, her pack on on her back, I found myself thinking about refugees crossing a mountain pass, leaving Shangri-la...

All of us living here have our road warrior stories. Title this new chapter the "Rocky Creek Slide" and add to it another chapter, begun two days ago, "Alder Creek Monster Slide" which we're told will keep Highway One to the south of Gorda closed for a month. After seeing this photo, you'll believe it.

As of April 15, the only way into Big Sur is over Nacimiento-Fergusson Road. A 2-3 hour detour which begins in the basin of the Valley of the Oaks in Jolon. Now here's more good news: tucked into the corner of this valley is Mission San Antonio de Padua. Built in 1771, it contains countless timeless pieces of the past in its small museum. There's also a wine press, a millstone, and as my young friend Nigel demonstrates here, a 200 year-old olive tree.

Visiting the Missions has always moved me, maybe because they remind me of my 1960's California childhood experience of struggling to build them out of sugar cubes, cardboard and clay in elementary school.

Saint Anthony is the patron saint of lost things, the one who guides us to hidden treasures, so it seems appropriate to visit him on your way to Big Sur. This route to the coast has its share of surprises too: perhaps you'll see the mysterious herd of thundering elk, smell the grape jelly scent of fields of lupine or feel a calm sense of awe as you come to the crest of the mountain above Lucia.

As the Buddhist teaching goes: Impermanence is the essence of life (or as my Dad used to say, The only constant in life is change). On this Friday, April 22 Highway One will re-open at the Rocky Creek Slide. This latest news proves again that it's possible to simultaneously feel great relief and nostalgia for difficult times.

Nigel at the Mission Olive tree photo by Margaret Goeden

Here we go again

Just when we think we're really part of the 21st century here in Big Sur (cell phones, satellite TV, internet cafés under the redwoods) Mother Nature comes along and whompers us.

This is what She did last week, the day before St. Paddy's Day. The fields and mountains in Big Sur are shamrock green, while the earth is wet and getting wetter with the Spring storms. Last Wednesday the southbound lane on Highway One, between Rocky Creek and Bixby Bridge, collapsed in magnificent fashion, beginning a decisive slide down a 200' sandy cliff towards the sea.

I snapped the photo above while crossing over the danger zone the morning after the event, carrying bags to our car in the bright cold sunlight on the "other side". Since it's a tiny dinosaur of a cell phone camera, I had to get very close to the buckling asphalt, to the concern of those around me.

"Honey, it's not a screen-saver," my husband said. Wait, holding a camera makes you a superhero, right? Walking back across the damaged road without shielding myself with technology, the scene somehow became more real.

I asked the two gentleman standing above the gaping hole that was once a highway, "So when are the engineers showing up to fix this?" "Engineers don't fix things, we fix things!" they said emphatically.

"What about putting in a one-lane road over there?" Playing the know-it-all local, I pointed to the empty flat space next to the northbound lane. "It's not so stable," replied the Sheriff standing nearby. So I jumped up high, landing firmly on the pavement, just to see what would happen. "Good thing you're little" they said and we all had a good laugh in the early morning sunshine.

Those of us who were here for 1998's El Niño season remember months of an impassable highway, reduced employment, insanely long "town runs" for supplies. And yet, in light of recent global events, this one just doesn't feel like such a hardship.

"Hardship" is defined as "a condition that is difficult to endure; suffering; deprivation; oppression". What we are experiencing here, (as a friend said wisely as we conferred at the Post Office yesterday) is “inconvenience”.

It's dark, stormy, and cold this morning, but there is a songbird singing in the wet woods beside our house, high true notes, as if it were warm and sunny outside, singing for his mate, to help build his nest and comfort him on the coming summer evenings.

Did I say it was cold? People are beginning to get concerned with filling their propane tanks, and grateful for the wood they've held onto over the winter months. Fortunately, I am one of those who still find it romantic to build a fire. We are living like quasi-gypsies: flashlights, vitamins and overnight bags in the car, ready for a sleepover somewhere other than home, due to a downed tree, power line or slide.

Fields of lupin and poppies are on the way, early spring Daffodils are drooping but beautiful. A symphony of happy frogs, birdsong and pouring rain: it's Spring in Big Sur!


Itty bitty pictures taken by Linda Sonrisa on her cell phone

The Three Mouseketeers

You might ask: how did this happen? How did two dog and wild bird-loving grown-ups end up with not one, not two, but three cats?

Here are some possible anwers:
Mice and their large cousins, rats, are everywhere in Big Sur, happy rural rodents with big appetites and no sense of decorum (running across the dining room floor at dinner time, for example, or squawling and gnawing all night between the walls).

Kittens are irresistible. And when someone hands you the one you didn't choose, 'cause the one you wanted is playing hard to get, well, you can't say no, can you?

We actually have a secret craving to be mauled by furry creatures who climb on top of us in bed. Oh, wait, that could be, um, misinterpreted.

So here they are, the three mouseketeers, in their favorite team snuggle position: Lola Augustina, Lady Pearl Grey, and Minerva Minnie-Moo. Three great mousers who still regularly go through tubs of cat food and vats of milk. Lola is curious, Pearl is calm, and Minnie (the previously shy one) will be all over you in no time, just like the proverbial "cheap suit."

Our dog is endlessly patient, enduring their curiosity, sniffing noses with them and staring back into their feline eyes. He only snaps at them when they get too familiar with his food bowl.

We have been invaded by this trio, and find ourselves to be happy collaborators in the good life they're enjoying in our home. They are living art, really. You never know where they'll turn up in a domestic tableau: beside the vase of calla lilies on the dining table, stretched out on the sheepskin beside the altar, or perched on the yoga deck staring out to sea. They pop up everywhere, reminders from the animal kingdom to check in with this moment and purr with contentment.

To be honest, we have asked, "want one?" to a few friends, only to realize that we could never choose which one to part with. So, we have three cats. A trinity of feline love that graces our home. And when the three-headed cat stares down at us in the mornings, meowing for breakfast, we laugh. In this way we remember just how silly we are, and how blessed, too.

photo by Toby Rowland-Jones

Snow on the Mountain!

Brrrrr! If I was really adventurous, I would have hiked to the top of the ridge and jumped in the snow drifts there this weekend.

However, I have a life-long dread of snow. Which I think may be hereditary (my mother left Minnesota for the same reason that Sam McGee longed to go home to Tennessee). She taught me the Cremation of Sam McGee (a ballad her father used to recite as well) and told me to buck up on cold California mornings on my way to school: ("It's nothing like Bemidji, darling," she'd laugh.)

So, snow is very exotic in my world. I've never skied (well, cross country once, in high desert, not especially alpine snow near the Grand Canyon) and now that I'm edging closer to the age of well, let's just say it, frailer bones, I'm not interested risking it. Give me a cute outfit though, and I can do the aprés ski thing fine.

It was 30 degrees on Partington Ridge most of the weekend, and I enjoyed tending the home fires, doing yoga, reading the New Yorker and assorted creation myths I've just discovered in one of the many, many books I own that I have yet to read. A true bookworm party-girl of the old school, I enjoyed a glass of champagne while taking a very HOT shower Sunday afternoon, opening the window to yell at the cats who were circling the bird feeder hanging from the olive tree. Yep, I'd say that's eccentricity!
photos by Linda Sonrisa

Coming home

Something we quietly acknowledge about living here in Big Sur, our sweet little secret is this: it's GREAT to come home, from anywhere. Whether from a day trip to Salinas or a month in Bali, as we drive back down Highway One we feel the magic.

We have our special rituals, places where we stop, get out of the car, take great gulps of fresh air, reach up our arms and smile. Looking down that coast at cliffs, ocean, clouds, perhaps a condor or two, we experience the involuntary ahhhh of the exhale and mmmmmm of the inhale. If we're returning at night, there's nothing like that moment of looking up, throat open, wonder streaming down, as we gaze at the abundance of twinkling stars in the heavens welcoming us home.

Right now I feel like I'm in a state of grace. So this is what a week-long yoga retreat (in the jungles of Mexico) does to the soul. Four hours per day of yoga and meditation. Further enriched by connecting with our amazing teachers and with all of the wise and funny students, while enjoying delicious vegetarian meals. Now back home, all I really want to do is curl up in the sun, like one of my cats, and breathe.

From time to time I'll gaze out at the world from behind my fur, in great peace. I want to lazily watch the hummingbirds while listening to the breezes in the trees. Life has become one long shivasana (resting pose) interrupted by all the running around (work-errands-classes-relationships) that I have to do to keep it going.

One of the great gifts that guided introspection in a formal setting brings is the undeniable, undiluted fact that the answers to your life's questions can be found inside you. This is both blessing (ah, so simple!) and curse (good lord, look how I'm everywhere but there!) Yoga and meditation are tools for listening to one's higher self. Living in natural beauty (or consciously appreciating it wherever you are) helps, too. Breath, movement and nature are all teachers, it's just that really showing up for class is still hard.

Last night I admired the constellations of Sirius and Orion chasing the moon in the western sky. A silver column of moonlight stretched across the sea to the bathtub in my garden, and I thought, well, here I am. Perhaps all my questions, worries, regrets, even my great joys, don't really matter. Maybe even the "answers" aren't so important. What matters is having a life. And for me I'd add this to the recipe: sharing this journey with my fellow spiritual travelers.

Shivasana on the mountain, anyone?

Photos by Linda Sonrisa