Asilomar: Rest and Refresh

The sun lifted up out of the Gabilan Mountains to the east, spreading sweet light on the morning.  I woke up hungry and everything looked like food, still felt like summer.  After a succulent brunch of plums, grapes, cheese and Canadian bacon, I finished my mug of coffee and said yes, let's walk at Spanish Bay and Asilomar State Beach, and off we went to the shore west of here.

The ocean was tumbling toward the rocks and sand in a jumble of swells and riptides, lacy streaks of white foam streaming back out oceanward.  The boardwalk that undulates and curves alongside the road was restless with people in motion.  Surfers, tidepool hunters, joggers and cyclists moved silently, as they seem to always in the presence of this jagged restless shore.  Certainly, our own voices were diminished with wind and ocean everywhere booming and sighing.  

Stitching between clots of humans who stood or sat at the beach, always gazing westward at the waves, were dogs, leaping, racing, splashing, circling, busy with all their dog business.  Their smiles were huge and their tongues flapped like pink flags in the breeze.

Circling back up off the beach after walking southward first, we found the boardwalk again, lined with sweet-smelling chaparral and feral nasturtiums, to the Phoebe Hearst Social Hall at the Asilomar Conference Center.

Julia Morgan, a prolific architect, designed and built hundreds of buildings including the YWCA retreat center, a conference center now, a testament to her ability to merge manmade structures with nature, using local building materials.

In the hall, stone, burnished wood and the fragrance of a glowing pine fire in the giant hearth invite restful reflection and offer retreat from the shoving and jangle of our crowded world.  Guests and visitors find the room both spacious and peaceful, a place to play the grand piano, practice billiards, read, write or sit in conversation with a companion.  Simply gazing out of the tall old window panes into the woods surrounding the area refreshes the mind and soul, too.  TV and telephones are absent throughout the conference grounds.  Murmuring voices, clicking billiard sticks, and piano notes become the white noise of this very special place.

Serenity and calm are made three dimensional in this hall.  Wind, sand, trees and ocean, so close by as to be indistinguishable from the grounds themselves, wait restlessly nearby, vital counterpoints to the organic majesty of the buildings of Asilomar.