Chomi and I drove down to Big Sur on the 21st. Big Sur is one of the main stops in the little tourist itinerary that Shanthala and I put together for any friend or family who’s visiting us, San Francisco and Yosemite National Park being the other two. If you’re not a nature lover and would prefer to see architecture and art, then we’d probably be poor companions though we’ve been to a few of the museums in ‘Frisco. We’re both followers of Byron’s line “I love not man the less, but Nature more”. Big Sur is one of the most dramatic confluences of sky, sea and mountains that I’ve seen, a temperate version of the soaring snow covered peaks and behemoth glaciers that we saw in Alaska. For example, Cone Peak in Big Sur is considered the largest coastal mountain in the lower 48 and it rises over 5000 feet just three miles from the ocean. Big Sur is perhaps the only place where the majestic coastal redwoods grow within sight of cacti and animals such as sea otters and cormorants live near arid climate creatures like canyon wrens. While there are a couple of a beautiful mountain and sea combinations in India especially in the place called South Kanara in Karnataka, they’re not as dramatic or as large as Big Sur is.
Big Sur is the Anglicized version of the Spanish name of the place, “El pais grande del sur” (Big Country of the South). The names given by the native Americans who lived there, the Ohlones, the Esselen and Salinan, are probably lost to time. The famous Esalen Institute and Salinas, immortalized by John Steinbeck, are probably the only names of the native Americans still in common use around Big Sur. Everything else reflects the history of the place post annexation by the US following the Mexican-American War in 1848: McWay Falls, Pfeiffer State Park and Julia Pfeiffer Burns Park, Andrew Molera State Park, all names of settlers and pioneers or land grabbers of the wild west, depending on your inclination to label such people.
I haven’t been down to Big Sur in a while, probably last going there when I took my in-laws there back in 2001. The brain is a beautiful creation, a three pound gem, but it is not without its constraints, one of which is its memorization of an experience. To cope with a lifetime of memories, it digitizes an experience by remembering its peaks and troughs and filling in the res of the details on demand. So my recollection of Big Sur were only the highlights, a vague sense of thrill and a collection of wows. The memories were given a refreshing fill-in with this trip. As with any beautiful experience, words only go so far in communicating the experience.
Where Big Sur starts and where it ends is not fixed, but most agree that it starts as the road begins to climb past the picturesque town of Carmel, a town made famous by its residents such as Ansel Adams and Clint Eastwood, and ends as the road starts its descent past the Santa Lucia mountains. In between, it soars as high as Hurricane Point and the intersection of Nacimento highway – which leads down to the most remote of the original California missions – and drops down to almost sea level at many places such as near Point Sur lighthouse. The now rising, now dipping roads and the winding turns can make for some slow driving in many places, which is as well, it gives even the driver a chance to let his dropping jaw bruise his knee. There are numerous turnouts close to the edge that provide a never-ending opportunity to take the scene in and attempt to capture the three-dimensional drama of the place within the confines of a two-dimensional celluloid.
My tours are almost always whirlwinds, constrained by time. This time, it was more related to getting back early enough to rest a while before dashing off to a local concert. I also was unhappy to leave Shanthala alone by herself the whole day. In this late stage of pregnancy, she finds these long drives very discomforting and exhausting. Starting at seven in the morning, I hoped to be back by three in the afternoon or so. My plan included a heavy breakfast so that we could skip lunch and eat something only on return. My plan called for taking highway 17 to highway 1 and then followed highway 1 all the way to Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park for a quick hike to see the unusual McWay Falls and then turn around and head back home. I managed to deviate from the plan on this trip.
Highway 17 is a beautiful winding road that goes through the fancy neighborhoods of Saratoga and Los Gatos to remote houses situated off roads branching off the highway without regular highway exits to summit at Patchen Pass before descending into the city of Santa Cruz. Throughout the drive, there is either a bangup view of the Santa Cruz mountains or you’re driving through them next to groves of coastal redwoods and other evergreen trees. I’ve read that most people can recognize more brand name logos than flora and fauna and I’m sadly among them. I had hardly paid attention to the trees and the birds around me when I grew up and not having parents who paid attention to them didn’t help me much. Now I struggle to recognize a few of the common ones. In writing these articles, I research the web for pictures and descriptions of what can be seen on the roads that I passed through and try and remember them for other times.
Highway 17 also happens to be one of the most dangerous highways in the state as it’s filled with commuters in a hurry to get to work or home and taking the curves a little too fast. Wikipedia reveals that the locals call the Northern part of the highway after the Summit “Valley Surprise” as many drivers hit the median on their hurried way to the valley. Chomi enjoyed the ride and was staring out of the window beatifically, like a child in a candy store. The sunlight filtering through the trees provides a magical play of light. I can see myself losing focus on the road with so much to admire around. I take the slow lane and take my time to make it through the highway. It’s only about 27 miles or so.
Highway 1 starting from Santa Cruz is somewhat boring, going through mostly suburbs and farmlands with nary a glimpse of the sea. You can feelits presence, but just can’t see it, probably till you get close to Moss Landing and go overElkhorn Slough and see the harbor with all the sailing boats anchored, awaiting their captains to journey to the sea. It’s not till you near Monterey that the sea starts playing hide and seek with you till you pass Carmel. Then, it’s right there, on one side all the time, beckoning you to stop at every possible turnout and gape in wonder at the dazzling spread that nature has laid out.
The road starts climbing and the beauty unfolds starting from the turn at Tickle Pink Inn. The weather in Big Sur is almost an invariant, the place presenting a magical charm in any weather. When I first went there, on a Memorial Day many years ago, the fog had yet to lift its head from the mountains and the place had a fairy tale land feel to it. When I went with my parents in 2001, the weather was bright and sunny and we tripped the light fantastic. The weather was again perfect when I ran the Big Sur Marathon in 2004, an exhilirating experience and a memorable one as I finished the marathon exceeding my expectations. On this trip, it was mostly azure skies except for some clouds in the initial part of the day.
Big Sur has been kept remarkably undeveloped thanks to the untiring efforts of the residents there. Robinson Jeffers, an American poet who popularized Big Sur in his poems and attracted the likes of Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac and Hunter Thompson, captures this attitude in his poem Carmel Point:
The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.
Thanks to their efforts, Big Sur is still largely devoid of human constructions despoiling the gorgeous views.
This was my first time in Big Sur in winter. Ice plants, imported from South Africa to stabilize soil along railroad tracks and coastal roads, dot the open hillside. They’re an invasive plant, but they sure look beautiful.
Bixby Creek bridge, a spectacular bridge over a deep gorge, along with its twin Rocky Creek bridge, is one of the highlights of the drive. It is one of the most photographed bridges in the world.
The green in the hills was offset every so often by the whites of pampas grass. As we approached Hurricane Point, the culmination of a two mile climb in the Big Sur Marathon, the dramatic Point Sur lighthouse makes its appearance. I’ve never managed to come at a time when I could capture this scene effectively as the sun is always behind the lighthouse. It sits atop a volcanic rock and is still an active lighthouse. We just enjoyed the view from the turnoff. As the road approaches Andrew Molera State Park, taller trees including coastal redwoods become visible. The yellows, the shades of blue and green were eye catching. There was a pullout from where we managed to capture the winter colors.
The drive continued to provide its share of oohs and ahhs till we got to Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. We disembarked for the short hike to see an instance of a remarkable type of waterfalls. Called tidefalls, these are waterfalls that fall directly into the ocean and McWay Falls is a brilliant example of such a fall. Falling from a rocky bluff into a iridiscently turquoise ocean. The setting is so idyllic, I find it easy to spend a really long time here watching the play of light on the waters. Unfortunately for us, the sun was positioned at the right spot in the horizon to spoil any possible picture of the scene and so you’ll have to take my word for it or look at some of the innumerable pictures available on the web. We also hiked to the primitive campground near the falls providing more spectacular views of the ocean.
We still had time and so I decided to take Chomi to the famous 17 mile drive just outside Monterey, which houses the world famous golf course, Pebble Beach. In the old days when Big Sur was just a name, we used to bring visitors to 17 mile drive to admire the spectacular coastal scenery. It is a private road and there is a charge to drive through it. The last time I was there, I was less enamored by its beauty, especially after seeing Big Sur. But time had erased any bad memories and I thought that the drive would be beautiful, though not as beautiful as Big Sur. It was largely a miscalculation. It is overhyped and though there I got a few beautiful snapshots of wildlife – such as that of a hawk below – and scenes of the restless sea, we felt that it was largely a waste of money.
We returned around 5 PM. Chomi said that he couldn’t remember when he last had enjoyed a day so much. It was only going to get more exciting. Next drive up was Yosemite which we tackled two days later.
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