Tom M. Wilson

Arrival…

No, it hasn’t been that dramatic a crash. But I’m going to be honest about my experiences here, and you’ll see that it isn’t all flowing smoothly.
Esalen is a kind of retreat centre, which offers week long courses in yoga, meditation, photography, amongst other things. There are about three hundred people on this cliff-side property on the steep sides of Big Sur, central coast California. Some of the people are staff, and some of the staff are ‘work-study scholars’, that is people who pay less money to live and study here for a longer period, as well as who work for some of their week. I am one of these people. I’m staying on the main property, quite close to the lodge (the dining hall) which is the centre of activity here. I’m sharing a room with a Korean guy, an English guy, and a very young American guy. They are all nice, low key people. However the English guy is on the bunk bed below me and he snores and even with ear plugs it disrupts my sleep. Hopefully tonight the white noise machine somebody left in the room will help. However not having a private space to retreat to from all the people - and the experience of being at Esalen is of being thrown into a sea of talking heads - gets me down a bit.

In the dining hall one eats at a buffet, and the food here is so various and gourmet in a very healthy sense that I am eating the best meals I’ve ever eaten.

Here is the kitchen. This is where I work six hours a day, five days a week. I am washing dishes or pots or chopping vegetables or taking salads out to the salad bar in the dining hall. I work quickly to alleviate the monotony of the jobs, and today I had the pleasure of having my iPod played on the stereo as the chef for the day didn’t have any music on him. What with work during the day and the two and a half hours of classes in the evenings I’m finding myself feeling overly controlled by outside forces (what with the additional factor of not having a private space of my own to retreat to after work or class).

But I want to give a balanced view of my experience here, so now it is time to turn to some of the positives of being at Esalen. At Esalen thermal hot springs are channeled into hot bathes which are perched on the edge of the cliffs. I generally try and have two trips down the hill each day to soak in the tubs. With sore muscles from scrubbing pots or running around the kitchen, it is just what one’s body needs.

I have yet to actually take my camera into the tubs - people are generally naked so they might not appreciate it if I did - but here is where I stand on the stones above the freezing cold Pacific ocean and have a hot shower before entering the baths.

Yesterday I had a rare moment of solitude in the bathes before lunch, and as I rolled around in the water I watched an otter rolling around in the much colder water below me on his back. A pleasing analogue in recreation between me and the ocean swimmer. Lying in the hot tubs is clearly one of the best things about this place.

I have to go to bed now as I’m exhausted, but I’ll continue this blog about Esalen tomorrow.

The longest Friday in my entire life started with walking through Surrey Hills in the morning in Sydney, and finished at midnight, tapping alone at my laptop, in Fairfax, a suburb of San Francisco. I left Friday afternoon and arrived Friday morning. While Australia had already moved into celebrating Australia Day I was still treading water back in Friday. In the Australian afternoon, as the plane moved out over Botany Bay I looked back and saw the white sandstone cliffs of NSW recede. A hot, dry land, yes, but at least a place where you can feel the sun on your skin. Thirteen hours later as I came into San Fran the turbulence of strong winds and heavy rains knocked the aircraft around. Upon emerging out of the car park with a debilitating mixture of nausea and sleep deprivation I found endless gray water sheeting the Californian sky. I’ve left summer and come to winter.

The feeling of having left the warm web of human associations back in Australia hit me about then and I felt sad on top of it all.  But don’t worry, after some sleep and food and drink I’ve revivified and today and feel ok again.

I’m an Australian in America.  I’ve come ambling out of the red centre…  A real man of the Australian wild doesn’t look like Crocodile Dundee, he looks like Jimmy Pike, brilliant Aboriginal hunter and tracker, pictured here with a Bilby (photo from Hunters and Trackers of the Australian Desert by Pat Lowe).

No, I’m clearly not a true Man of the Wild.

This isn’t me.  I’m more at home with the button on my Nikon, than the grip of a throwing spear, and the sound of a trumpet being blown at a party, than the sound of a dingo howling after dark.  But I am more in touch with the natural world than most people.

So when I arrived here in San Fran the first thing I wanted to do was see what the land looked like beyond the built walls of civilization.  It is green and wet, so different to the arid land and blasting sun of south-western Australia I’ve just come from.   The experience of coming from one season and land to another season and land in such a short time is jarring at first, but I’m already adjusting to a winter key.

Moss and lichen coat the stones, and the waving arms of the oak trees in the valley.

The rain that fell yesterday and last night has created torrents where before there were just dribbles.

This cataract, and former dribble, is in Fairfax, a small town about 45 minutes drive from the centre of San Francisco.  We’ve had some very serious rain here, with potential for dangerous flooding in the area.

This little house I noticed on my way out to this waterfall, on the side of the road in Fairfax.  The flag tells the true story as I see it.  I am an Australian entering American territory, but more importantly, I’m a human being entering another bioregion within the global biosphere.  This land is part of the common treasure and heritage that is the biosphere.

Tomorrow morning I’m off to Esalen, Big Sur, to start my work-study program there.

To all my friends, I miss you!

The act that founded the city of Perth, Western Australia, for white folks in 1829 was the cutting down of a tree on Mt. Eliza in today’s Kings Park, and the firing off of a volley of shots. Since then the transplanted British and their progeny have not done the best job of living well with nature around here.  Perth has a long way to go when it comes to cultivating the presence of wild nonhuman life within its suburbs.

Tomorrow I’m flying to Sydney and on Friday I’m flying to San Francisco. I’m going to be a work-study scholar at the Esalen Institute, studying massage for ten weeks there. The feeling of anticipation is building. I do like the landscape of Western Australia, but it is very flat here, and it is going to be a real pleasure to see some big hills in Big Sur, northern California. I’m not going to Esalen only to study massage, I’m also going to spend some time under a big starry sky, by the cold Pacific, far away from city life. Living in the suburbs dulls one’s perceptions to some degree, and I’m hoping that these coming few weeks will sharpen my senses and my appreciation of the natural world.

This morning I and my friend Yvonne went down to Bather’s Beach in Fremantle for a swim.  This is my last dip into the warm blue Indian Ocean before heading into the northern hemisphere winter.  As we swam two dolphins, a mother and her young one, came and played with us.  I and Yvonne gasped with surprise as the glistening fins surfaced a few metres away from us.  They circled around us, and I ducked under the water and swam alongside the large grey shape of the mother.  I couldn’t believe that just five minutes bike ride from my house I was playing around with a couple of huge, intelligent wild beings in the warm shallows of the sea.  They were so much larger than us, and so lithe in their liquid space.  What a benediction to receive just before I leave Australia.

I didn’t have my camera handy when the dolphins turned up, but this is where we met the strangers from the blue.  Look at the colours of the ocean today (and thanks for the photo Yve).

There is still wildness to be found in the city.