Rockin' In Big Sur's Arms

The gray, somber, ever-present fog clung to the coast north and south as far as our eyes could see. As we looked down the last stretch of Highway 1 and saw wispy shreds of the fog yielding to blue sky and warm sun, our spirits lifted. Ah, there's Big Sur, I thought, a cup of loveliness sheltered behind a coastal ridge and tucked up next to the shins of very steep mountainsides, all covered in dry chaparral and regal redwoods.

Big Sur looks like Shangri La, the fabled land of perfection in the high mountains, and in a way it is just that. But the perfection lies in its enigmatic ruggedness and inaccessibility that seduces you nevertheless. Warm yet forbidding, it has an allure that bewitches the heart. Even on the worst weather days when the wind is howling cold, the vistas are grand and inspire poetry, art and soul searching.

We four friends locked up the car at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, slung on our daypacks and strode forth, ready for a bit of bugs-in-our-teeth adventure, gnarly personal challenge, ready for transformational experience.  Heck, just a nice walk would do. If we were 30 years younger, we'd have headed up into the Ventana Wilderness whose tawny flanks guard the valley's winding road and river. But, we are not 30 and we really only wanted a good look around, so we chose the Buzzard's Roost Loop that starts by crossing a low-slung footbridge across the Big Sur River, skirts it heading northwest for a short way and then begins zig-zagging upward to the ridge top.

Coastal ridges that face north are furred in redwood trees, whose tall regal bulk in turn hide the ridge tops rather neatly. We had no accurate idea of the climb we were undertaking, could not see the top nor the trail, but it was shady, fragrant and very accessible, so we took it. When you have fond memories of being 30 and have worked out a little bit now and again during the preceding weeks, you find that you are a little overconfident and plow ahead.

I remembered our hike on the Kalalau Trail on Kauai last November.  I measured this trail to that with a yardstick of muddiness and steepness well in mind. This is not so bad, I thought. The surface is well trod and very easy to see. The shade of the redwoods and bay trees kept us cool as we strode up and up, encountering a few other hikers who looked very comfortable as they came down the trail.

I have to say right here that no matter where I hike, virtually all other hikers look better than I do when it comes to breathing rate and volumes of sweat. I win when it comes to sweat. I often appear to have emerged from an epic battle with a fire hose and a dragon somehow. As a point of reference, I sweat just standing watering my garden at home on a warm-ish day. It is rather impressive, I have to say.

There is a branch in the trail that says Buzzard's Roost with arrows pointing left and right.  You get to choose! We had no information about which direction was considered better, so we chose the left-hand direction and continued on. Two of us were in better hiking condition than the remaining two, and one of us was hiking in heeled sandals. It was not me. You can bet that if I were the one hiking in heeled sandals, I would have turned an ankle right off the bat and ended up cartwheeling down the near-vertical steep slope and landed like a javelin in the river. Guaranteed. Loose ankle joints help me swim well, not hike fast.  I am not a billy goat with little tiny firm feet. I have flippers.

I began to sweat. I felt pretty capable of doing the hike, but I don't think I looked very capable with sweat streaming down my face. No one else I saw was sweating. No one was even damp.  This has been a characteristic of mine since I was born. I remember doing trampoline in gym class in middle school and having the other girls look at me with wide eyes and furrowed brows, surely alarmed at my appearance. You cannot look cool as a 12 year old with a tomato-red face and streams of sweat coursing down your face, soaking your gym clothes. After four bounces on the tramp, I was a mess.  My friends would look away, probably praying for me. I tried to ignore it, like my mom taught me.  "Just ignore them, Christine. It doesn't matter what they think."

So I climbed up and up, wiping away streams of sweat, striking nonchalant poses when hikers wanted to pass us.  I could still not see the ridge where the buzzards roost, but I was enjoying the beautiful splendor of Big Sur's nearby mountains, across the valley. A huge fire torched the area in 2008; I saw stands of skeletal tree trunks in the distance, testimony to the intense heat of the fire back then.

My friend in heeled sandals called back, "Hey, it's the top!" (She is undeniably the sunniest person I know.) I called back to my dear husband, "The top!" and rounded yet another hairpin curve in the trail. False alarm.  More trail, but it now included sets of steps set into the trail where erosion had worn it down. On we went, and I a fountain still, drops trickling down my glasses, my nose, my ears, and my eyes. I could be installed as public art somewhere. I felt good though, to be out in nature with friends, looking for adventure, pioneer-ish or something.

Swimming doesn't prepare you for hiking except for the mental perseverance part of it. Only flip turns remotely compare to hiking, and even that's a stretch. My legs were holding up okay, but only just. I'd have to get out and hike more often, I was thinking, willing the end of the uphill to come soon. More sweat splatted onto my shoulders, clung to my eyelashes.

The top!  The view! We had emerged from the blanket of redwoods to the manzanita-covered ridgetop where the temperature was drier, much warmer and very pleasant. The work of hiking uphill was worth it as soon as we saw the distant hills, a diorama of steep mountains plunging to a cool pale ocean in the distance and ridge after ridge of redwood-crested land wrapped gently in drifting fog.  In the sun, I could begin to dry off again.  We milled about looking for a place to settle down for a rest.  There is a radio relay shack at the top and very little space to spread out and enjoy a picnic, so we stood and ate, looking at the views. The food was arrayed by the trail on top of my overshirt. A young boy, gaining the flat ridgetop after emerging from the brush at the side of the trail, eyed our food.  We were just getting to the end of our lunch.  He avoided eye contact with us but said to his older sister, "Did we bring food, too?"  He looked so desperate, being ten years old, skinny and tired, that we handed over some cookies for him. He accepted them like a prize.

Rather than taking a nice warm siesta in the sun or sitting on a rock and basking in the glow after the uphill push, everyone gathered up the remnants of lunch, shouldered the daypacks and began the descent down to the river again.  Oh lordy, my thighs began to feel the extra work immediately.  They held up, bless 'em, but they complained about the abuse and mistreatment.

There is a tradition started by a younger sister:  Be sure to savor a root beer float after a good sweaty hike, so I kept that in the front of my mind as I descended.  We felt good and happy, satisfied and tired at the end of our adventure, and all of us indulged in a huge overestimation of the distance of the hike. 1.8 miles had become 4 and then 15 and finally 24 miles. With tigers.  As in, "Man, that had to be at least 4 miles!"

"I think it was 10 for sure."

"Did you see that snake?"

"Yeah, it was this long (hands indicating a 12-inch span)."

"Nah, it was this long (hands held much wider)."

"I heard a tiger roaring."

"Me too."

Once we reached the level again, we took the trail to the Big Sur Lodge and bought some cool treats. There are big rustic sofas in the lounge area, which is where I sucked down my RBF, truly a hiker's ultimate gourmet food.

Still feeling held in the mellow arms of Big Sur, we drove south to Nepenthe to show our friends the view as well as the gift shop and gardens. The decks were crammed with visitors, probably the most crowded day of the year to be there. Finally, we drove back north to The River Inn and brought out blankets from the car to the back lawn to enjoy the remainder of our food and listen to live Brazilian jazz. The Inn has great music every Sunday afternoon, and the food served in the restaurant is very tasty. If you're really lucky, you can sit in Adirondack chairs in the river as it flows gently by down behind the Inn.  Once the blankets were spread out, we all fell asleep, surrounded by music, dancing babies and all kinds of happy humanity.  While lying on my back with the blue sky arching overhead, I took pictures of tree tops and the band while my companions snored on softly. It seemed the images were more of sound than subjects, now that I look at them.

My sweat and effort were already remembered proudly, even fondly, as I recalled the hike and listened to the samba rhythm.  Isn't that the way it always is? In Big Sur, no matter what happens, how hard the hike or crowded the road, once you're there it rocks you peacefully in its big natural embrace.

Big Sur: Her Quiet Song

Big Sur is singing its deep quiet song today.  Everyone hears it differently, but it's there, one that is heard best in a redwood grove or at the river's edge. Its voice is joined by redtail hawks, jays, juncos, gurgling river currents and rustling dry grasses of midsummer.

You drive from Monterey south on Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) under the gray cap of fog that sits low on the brow of the coastal range.  The cliffs and steep ravines angling down to the Pacific are dotted with wildflowers, strewn with granite boulders.  After 30 miles, a wide view opens up to you at Andrew Molera State Park with its beautiful ranch land on your left.  Just in front of you, all visual lines point to the Big Sur Valley, a narrow cleft formed by coastal hills to its right and the Ventana Wilderness mountains to the left.  Down the middle winds the Big Sur River, and groves of redwood trees reach straight up, ruddy and tall, with capes of green draping off their shoulders.

The fog lifts just before you enter Big Sur, the temperature is warm and the air fragrant.  Rain, heat, sorrow and love are all more intense than in Monterey.  Salvation and redemption are often felt to be more possible, but so, too, can be the depths of sadness.  The vivid quality of nature stimulates senses to a more unmistakable degree here and if you are unprepared, you may be undone by it.

I could tell you that I went to Big Sur today, and it would be true, but it hardly tells you anything.  Big Sur has an effect on people that special places do.  We slow down, we look more closely, we breathe more deeply there.  But, the experience is in the place itself, in the wildness of its surrounding.

It so happened we had breakfast at the River Inn because we like to see the river as we eat breakfast and then walk by it for a while.  It's a place that, while you're there, makes you wonder why in the world all rivers are not enjoyed this way, sitting in an Adirondack chair midstream with a canopy of leafy green overhead.

As has happened every time I have been to Big Sur, I felt as if mother nature herself was exerting a more powerful influence on me, casting a deeper spell.  There is a gentle loveliness at the river's edge.  Reluctant to go back north just yet, we walked along an easy trail at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park down the road a mile and found more river trails to follow.  Soon enough, we found ourselves hiking on a winding uphill path called Buzzard's Roost Trail through cool towering and shade-giving oaks, laurel and redwood.

After descending again, sweaty and relaxed from our effort, we walked again by the river in shady areas back to our car.  It is plain that the California State Park system is beautiful but facilities are ragged and unkempt as the state sags into insolvency; much infrastructure is lying in ruin.  Big Sur exacts a toll on the man-made structures in the park in good times.  During fire or flood, damage is accelerated.  Compared to days I'd spent here as a child, the park appears heavily used and almost loved too much.  It's sad to see the decline, to be sure.

The car drove home somehow.  We were quieter on the way north.  It's what happens, what Big Sur does to you, sings to you her age-old song using rhythms of life and death.  You listen with more than your ears, sense it with your whole self, an abiding song we don't always find time to listen to as we rush around all day.  But, what a fine song it is.

French Toast on the Coast

This is the weekend of the Sea Otter Classic at Laguna Seca, a weekend-long festival of all things bicycle related.  We have seen flocks of cyclists around town, riding in small bunches, twos and threes, and they have been blessed with premium conditions including very light wind and mild sunshine.  Though the hills of the area are furry with green grass and bushy green trees, wildflowers are not growing in the profusion of the previous year, but cyclists have been blessed with eye candy like never before.

Although the Classic is a lively and kinetic circus -- mostly silent in comparison to what happens at Laguna Seca during car-racing season coming up -- we chose to set aside that sort of fun in favor of a deep breath of loveliness at Nepenthe for brunch.  The drive sparkled with beauty.  In my mind I relived rides I've made in the past on bicycles to and from Big Sur and generally tend to think of the drive in terms of both the difficulty and challenge it presents for pedalers.  The stretch from Rio Road to Big Sur is just under 30 miles and always seems much prettier going south, mostly because there is a tailwind and the earlier morning light on the textured mountainsides is more interesting.

There are few places you can go in California (or the world) that set your heart to soaring like the Santa Lucia range does as it stretches with wild abandon above the ragged coast.  The restaurant at Nepenthe opens at 11:30, but the Cafe Kevah was open when we arrived, which was just as wonderful.  Our appetites were in full roar by the time we arrived, and the aromas and sounds of a bustling kitchen put an edge them.

The cafe is entirely outdoors and affords a view of infinite waterline draped in a soft misty gauze bordered by the knees of the continent cloaked in green.  The food was delicious and we did not think it so simply because were in the lap of paradise, struck dumb with bliss.  Big Sur generally tends to be expensive because all supplies must be brought quite a distance from major trucking routes, but service and culinary artistry has improved over the years to match what people expect in Carmel.  Cinnamon brioche french toast was $10 and my very large cappucino was $5.50.

We took a tour around the just opened restaurant on the terrace above the cafe and then into the Phoenix Gift Shop just below, both of which are unique in a New Age style.  Well worth a visit to either one or both.

To say we were satisfied with our drive into the redwood- and pine-scented arms of the Big Sur valley and up to the angel's aerie of Nepenthe is a silly understatement.  It's inspiring, refreshing, and today was beautiful beyond compare.

Running on The Coast: The Marathon

Big Sur isn't very far away.  About 35 miles or so, maybe 40, down the winding rock-encrusted coast.  At the end of the month, the last Sunday, a whole host of school buses fling open their doors at 5 AM, gather up a horde of humans and bring them all the way down to Big Sur where they are released.  Then, the horde faces north, the direction from which they have just come, and they all run back.  From the time they begin until exactly 12 noon, the coast highway echoes with the soft, rhythmic plop-plopping sound of running shoes on asphalt, murmuring voices and heavy breathing.  At one-mile intervals, music wafts in the morning salt air rising from the shore far below.

Running is what we humans do, when we aren't walking, squatting or lying around.  We are meant to run. Modern life insists that instead of running we sit, lounge, recline, and shuffle from cubicle to car to Barcalounger.  The organizers of the Big Sur International Marathon decided that whoever has the will and desire to spring off their La-Z-Boy and use their legs as they were intended would be rewarded in  magnificent style.

They stop all traffic on the gorgeous coast road, provide zillions of enthusiastic volunteers to ply the sore muscles and lagging spirits of runners with massage, snacks, drink, medical attention and encouragement.  They find musicians and haul them down to strategic points along the 26.2 mile route to play fine, heavenly music; a grand piano plays at the bottom of a long descent that culminates at the base of the Bixby Creek Bridge, for instance.

The runners must still head home, like homing pigeons in a flock that wears high-tech gear instead of feathers.  The course is extraordinarily difficult for a marathon, far hillier than it has any right to be, but the event fills up immediately when it's announced.  The prestige and sense of achievement is undeniable.  Friends and relatives have run it, some many times, and they all talk about how hard it was to do, how they suffered, wonder about their own sanity.  But none of them regrets it.  I took part in the 10-mile walk one year, an adjunct to the actual marathon, presented at the same time on part of the same course.  It, too, was difficult.  My feet were tired beyond the normal understanding of that word, but I was elated.

You can drive along the coast in your car, but, as usual, you will be missing a lot of the sensory experience that slower, human-powered travel affords you.  Get out and walk for a little way (be safe, of course).  Or ride your bike.  The coast will feel wilder, and I'll bet so will you.

The event will be happening next weekend, last weekend in April.  Probably the most unique thing that happens in the area, the most human of all things, running wild, for the good of our souls.