tom m wilson

Now for the place…

We are on the edge of some cliffs above the ocean. The days are cool, maybe 15 degrees? I can’t tell you what temperature it is with certainty as the Americans use Farenheit which I don’t understand.

Yesterday I walked up the canyon, and looked around and saw big trunks, dignified and ramified by thousands of years. Leaving the dining hall (to the right of this photo) and the society of this place, I was confronted by nature. A sudden lifting of the veil and I see that I am in a place, not just a sea of talking heads. Up the path I sat and watched the water shoot down the creek before me. Turning to my side I noticed shafts of sunlight catching and highlighting the green grass on the ground around me. The air is cool and humid here, and I can’t ignore that I am in a place not just a society.

In the mornings the ocean hits the rocks and creates a fine mist of spray along the coast as you look south from the dining hall (here I’m looking into a reflection from the window of the sun-room).

My ambivalence about the earnest and irony-deficient character of Esalen village life is not extended to this patch of the Big Sur coast. I love it.

As usual I don’t have enough time to do any writing here, but I thought I would share a few of my recent images.

Dinner in the lodge with John the piano man…

Frail barques set sail on the ocean of blue, their wings setting a faltering and delicate course outwards. These are Monarch butterflies over-wintering in Big Sur.  The ones further east in the US make their way down to Mexico for winter each year.

Far from the chatter and the heat of the crowd…

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More thoughts and images from El Sur Grande (The Big South)…  A word on history.  This part of the world has a Spanish name due to its Spanish history, which started a couple of hundred years ago.  In 1770, while James Cook was mapping the east coast of Australia, on the other side of the Pacific the Spaniard Gaspar de Portola was spear-heading the spreading of Catholic missions to this part of the world. The Esalen Indians, and other tribes of native Americans, were quickly converted to Christianity and lost their culture.  Until about seventy years ago this part of California didn’t even have a road going to it.  In 1938 Highway 1 opened it up to tourists, of which there were to be many.  Some of the interested travelers to have visited have included Ansel Adams, Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Jack Kerouac.  Short history lesson I know, but my sources here are sparse.

It is still winter as I sit here in Big Sur, with the Santa Lucia mountains to my back, but we have had a series of sunny days in the mid twenties so it doesn’t feel like it.   The other evening I was walking back up the hill from the hot tubs listening to the Californian reggae group Groundation on my headphones.  A couple of people walked down the path past me, carrying the smiles of those who have just come off the dance floor, as they had.  I looked out at the dark sky and the moon and thought I am glad to be here…

Greeting the sun in a rare moment of solitude.

The pulse is strong.

The water is green and cold.

Sprawling coast live oak draped with lace-like lichen creates a dark, convoluted space.  The hills of Big Sur are a mosaic of grassland, oak woodland, redwood forest, and coastal shrub.

Look at my American gallery on this website to see recent sights to have met my eyes – my image editing software is broken, so I’m just putting unedited images straight into the gallery at the moment.

So, another epistle from the headquarters of credulous Californian hippydom. Rather than dwelling on the negatives of being here, like little time to one’s self and little privacy, I’ll throw down some vignettes of things I’ve enjoyed.

An early morning awakening rewarded with a pink sky, and a rainbow in the midst of the mellow splendor.

Stopping on the road and watching five condors swing and glide out of towering thermals. They were flying without needing to move their wings, as though they were using hang-gliders with fixed structures above their torsos.

At Point Lobos. Cold and windy, and towards the end of the day. Shadowy vistas, grass glades, wizened, wind-wracked zig-zagging boughs of Monterey Cypress, and ancient and tilted stone boulders above the loquacious Pacific. A philosophical location.

Here’s a photo of the front lawn of Esalen…  two young fellas watch the sun slip away.