Fog spirits, red-legged frogs, sea beasts, zen water elixirs, human nests, eco-mansions, and the lit cult of sex and anarchy.  Welcome to the restorative magic of El Pais Grande Del Sur.

by Rob Hill  |  photography by Todd Hido

POETS, KATE BOSWORTH, BOOTLEGGERS & CHINESE MARINERS
Just 13 miles south of Carmel, California stands one of the highest single-span concrete arch bridges in the world, the Bixby Bridge. Its elongated beauty is matched only by the perfectly marbled blue-and-white ocean waves crashing on the rocky coastline below, the two story high white spit splattering on the razor-sharp rocks. Reaching over 260 feet high and spanning over 700 feet long, Bixby Bridge is a structural masterpiece, and probably the most photographed object along Highway 1 in California. It is here, at the river mouth that flows under the Bixby Bridge, that the California sea otter was rediscovered one day in 1938 playfully frolicking in the kelp beds, after a mysterious and unexplained 100-year extinction. And, October 2011 marked 79 years since the Bixby Bridge allowed travelers to cross into the mist-shrouded—some would say magical—forests of Big Sur.

While Big Sur is more an area and an experience rather than an official town and destination, its unofficial perimeters include the 90 miles of coastline stretching from the Carmel River south to the San Carpoforo Creek, extending 20 miles inland to the eastern foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains. Like Bhutan, the last pristine Buddhist wilderness hidden in the Himalayas that has only recently become an international destination, the Eden of Big Sur has been semi-blessed by its splendid isolation, namely the jagged and impenetrable coastline, for centuries.

From the 1800s to the 1950s, Big Sur was the watery graveyard to over 20 major and spectacular shipwrecks. Finally, in 1886, a lighthouse was built at Point Sur and a slow trickle of explorers began to arrive. The first Europeans to see Big Sur were Spanish mariners in 1542, who sailed up the coast but never actually landed. Almost two centuries passed before the Spanish attempted to explore Big Sur again, and in 1769 the first Europeans set foot in Big Sur but were so terrified by the rugged wilderness that they settled far inland. Before they did, however, legend has it the Spanish gave Big Sur its name, dubbing the region “el país grande del sur,” (the big country of the south).

Not surprisingly, over the years the place has developed, like the ghostly morning murk, a mystical he-said/she-said shape-shifting history. Die hard Sur-ites swear Chinese mariners, sent by the emperor in the first millennium BC to “search for the mountainous paradise and find out about the drug the inhabitants used to live forever,” landed on the rocky shores and explored the jungles. In recent years, a large, heavy stone anchor from what appears to be an ancient Chinese ship was discovered off the coast seems to support this tale. Others say voyages from India, Cambodia, Malaysia and Java made it to Big Sur. There is evidence, too, the Russians were drawn to the area by the sea otter pelt trade in the 1770s, bringing with them highly skilled Inuit hunters to harpoon the animals from their kayaks; their tenure in Big Sur helped to establish the area’s reputation as “a dark and bloody land.” A tome in my hotel puts it bluntly: “Feuds, murders and suicides in Big Sur were reminiscent of the Ozarks.”

In 1943, according to one of Big Sur’s first settlers, rancher Walter Trotter, a WW11 Japanese submarine surfaced off Partington Cove, one of only two known Japanese subs to be spotted off the West Coast during the war. Author Robert Cross, who wrote Big Sur Tales and Henry Miller: The Paris Years, likes to talk about how, during Prohibition, Big Sur had a system to profit from the illegal booty: Rojillo Castro, a rancher and hog-farmer, would “in the dark of night lower a basket of money down the front cliff of the ranch’s grassy knoll to the moonlit shoreline below…in exchange for quality bootleg alcohol pulled back up…neither the seller or buyer ever saw each other.” According to Cross, the Feds got wind and sent an agent, Kurtz-like, down the coast to sort it out but he never came back. When another agent was later sent he found the agent’s horse with his colleagues boots still in the spurs. “They never heard from the Feds again,” Cross says. The more time you spend in Big Sur you quickly realize there is something allegorical—not quite real—about the place that has inspired so many myths, poetry, dreams and dewy apocrypha.

However, the more documented changes in Big Sur came in the early-to- mid-twentieth century, when its natural beauty, uncanny spirituality and monkshood began to attract writers, artists, astrologists and exiled healers: Robinson Jeffers, Henry Miller, Hunter S. Thompson, Emile Norman, and Jack Kerouac journeyed to and or lived here. Kim Novak, Clint Eastwood, Jack London, Man Ray, Jimi Hendrix, and Dylan Thomas were also swayed by its spell. But it was Jeffers, who coined the phrase “in-humanism”—the belief that mankind is too self-centered and too indifferent to the “astonishing beauty of things”—who was Big Sur’s true poetic trailblazer. Beginning in the 1920s, his poems “Bixby’s Landing,” “The Beaks of Eagles,” and “Boats in the Fog” (Out of the mystery, shadows, fishing-boats, trailing each other/Following the cliff for guidance/Holding a difficult path between the peril of the sea-fog And the foam on the shore granite/One by one, trailing their leader, six crept by me/ Out of the vapor and into it/The throb of their engines subdued by the fog, patient and cautious/Coasting all round the peninsula) first introduced the romantic idea of Big Sur’s feral and eccentric sweep to the world. His poems were translated into many languages and published all over the world. (Charles Bukowski remarked some years later that Jeffers was “probably his favorite poet.”) Jeffers, who used to have to walk three miles up a dusty road to get his milk and mail, was also an inspiration and friend to western U.S. photographers of the early twentieth century, including Ansel Adams, who is said to have spent time with Jeffers on Big Sur’s soaring cliffs and in its quiet timberlands.

Henry Miller, mystic, seeker and sex-mad literary exile fresh from Paris and World War II, moved to Big Sur in the 1940s, ditching his carnal literary persona in favor of a more Zen Eastern life (“the Buddha of Big Sur”). He wrote about the natural world and philosophy instead of festering, rotting metropolises and greed-driven whoredom. His 1957 novel, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, described the joys and hardships that came from escaping the “air-conditioned nightmare” of modern life and settling on a small, lonely log house on a hilltop hundreds of feet above the riotous Pacific Ocean. “Big Sur is the California that men dreamed of years ago,” he wrote. “This is the Pacific that Balboa looked at from the Peak of Darien, this is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look.”

Lit rogue Hunter S. Thompson was so enamored to spend time here that he worked as a security guard and caretaker at the Big Sur Hot Springs in 1961 just to soak up the creative ambiance, take a deep, fresh breath…and write, write, write. “This is the way life goes in Big Sur,” Mojo Gonzo once wrote to a friend on a postcard. “Waiting for the mail, watching the sea-lions in the surf or the freighters on the horizon, sitting in the tubs at Hot Springs, once in a while a bit of drink… and, most of the time, working at whatever it is that you came here to work on, whether it be painting, writing, gardening or the simple art of living your own life.”

While there, he penned a lengthy article for Rogue magazine called “Big Sur: The Tropic of Henry Miller,” a meditation on the pull of the place and its most famous resident—Miller. On a typewriter that was carefully balanced atop a rocky cliff, with his shirt off, rum poured, and dog by his side—while his girlfriend sunbathed naked down below—the good doctor wrote: “No sooner than Miller had settled in Big Sur, hoping for some solitude, than thousands of people sought him out. When all Miller wanted was to be alone, they struggled up the steep dirt road to his small cabin on Partington Ridge; if there was a fornication carnival or cult of anarchy sex going on up there, they were damn well going to be in on it. At times it seemed like half the population of Greenwich Village was camping on his lawn.”

He described his first impression of the alien, foggy settlement this way: “The highway alone is enough to give man a pause. It climbs and twists along the cliffs like a huge asphalt roller coaster; in some spots you can look 800 feet straight down to the booming surf. The green slopes of the mountains plunging down to the sea is nothing short of awesome… and almost every person you meet looks like a rancher or woodsy poet.”

A demon-filled Jack Kerouac, purportedly arriving by taxi—sodden with whiskey, cognac & imported vodka—from San Francisco in the middle of the night, spent a few weeks in Big Sur in the early sixties; he wrote his novel, Big Sur, based on his experiences. The novel recounts the events surrounding Kerouac’s fictional alter ego, Jack Duluoz, and his sojourn to a cabin in Bixby Canyon owned by a poet friend. The novel depicts Duluoz’s mental and physical deterioration after his first book becomes a best seller. Duluoz, unable to cope with sudden stardom, and battling chronic alcoholism, seeks solitude, like Miller, in a Big Sur cabin, then begins a love affair with the mistress of his best friend. Duluoz does, indeed, find respite in the hypnotic wilderness—for a while. Earlier this year, Hollywood came north to these literary groves to turn the book into a major motion picture. Directed by Michael Polish and staring Kate Bosworth, Josh Lucas, Radha Mitchell and Jean-Marc Barr as Jack Kerouac, Big Sur the movie is due out in early 2012. Accompanying the movie, a new edition of the book will include Kerouac’s poem “Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur.”

Tiresome old sea, ain’t you sick
& tired of all this merde?
This incessant boom boom
& sandy walk…
Just gloom booboom & green
On foggy nights- the fog is a part
Of us-
I know, but tired
As I can be listening to all
This silly majesty

WHERE THE TREE MONSTERS ARE

Highway 1 winds like a viper through the shifting coast of California: flower plantations turn to cow pastures, which give way to wide open beaches that merge into skyrocketing cliffs and, finally, the heavy forests of Big Sur. It arrives abruptly with the rush of massive redwood and pine trees spilling dramatically to the sea bluffs, creating a beautiful, if not startling, landscape: rugged, strange, breathtaking. In fact, it was so arresting that Orson Welles bought a house as he was passing through for the first time, simply stopping the car, finding a real estate agent, and cutting a check. (Reportedly, he never spent a single night.)   Once you enter its charming woods, anything goes: cacti snuggle with pine trees; seals fornicate on the beach; 20-million- dollar mansions straight out of Architectural Digest dangle on sea cliffs next to tiny, rustic cabins; dense, foggy mornings give way to dazzling sunny afternoons that run into peculiar orange-sherbet sunsets that in turn get muscled by cold, starless, spooky nights; fist-sized monarch butterflies cluster in the eucalyptus trees, an orgy of flitting black-and-orange wings; big, hairy wolf spiders cross the road like toy tanks; thousands of skittish salamanders munch on rare, wild orchids before they, themselves, become breakfast for dive-bombing condors; and, if you believe John Steinbeck’s mother, “little dark people” and benevolent fairies play in the mist of waterfalls.    No matter how many times you enter Big Sur, it is a psychological and transformative event. The place seems like it just sprang to life from the pages of a Maurice Sendak book. You half expect to be greeted by hookah-smoking dragons, operatic fireflies, drawbridge ogres, professorial walruses, bumbling yetis, and virginal forest nymphs. In fact, long-time residents speak seriously of huge-winged angels (“devas”) hovering in the trees, choirs of heavenly voices singing in many languages, and a dark-winged beast guarding the shoreline. “Beware of the sea beast,” warned a noted spiritualist. “They do not mean to harm anyone. They are like lion cubs. It is dangerous to play with lion cubs.” As far back as the 1800s, the local Indians spoke of “howling fog spirits” and “tree monsters.” Big Sur may be many things, but it is not your average place.

Sitting right in the center—anchoring the area like a concrete-and-wood sanctuary—is the Esalen Institute, a veritable hub of some of the most prolific healers in the world working in massage, gestalt, yoga, psychology, ecology, spirituality, art, and shamanism. While walking the seemingly empty grounds, it is hard to believe that Esalen offers more than 500 public workshops a year, in addition to invitational conferences, residential work-study programs, research initiatives, and internships.  All I see are fat bumblebees peacefully slurping their pollen and a lazy colony of grasshoppers.

But it’s not company, or brightly colored insects, that people come here for—it’s the curative spring waters that are desired. Once home to the Native American Esselen tribe, the underground tepid springs—open to the public from midnight to 3am—have been used as a panacea for all kinds of diseases for centuries. (Miller once took a cantankerous houseguest to the springs to help assuage his oozing, ulcerated skin sores.) The baths are a sight to see—and feel. The pools simply melt into the terrain, becoming, if you are in the right mood, gurgling prehistoric nests. Hey, is that a Brontosaurus grazing on kelp beds? A Pterodactyl angling for leviathan cubs? Look, right there!? Concrete, sandstone, and clerestory windows merge with a rocky ledge, appearing to float 50 feet above the Pacific. While soaking in the 119-degree natural springs pumping 80 gallons per minute, the view is simple, serene and disarming. The tangled sea kelp turns the ocean a brownish blue, taking on the personality of a swamp rather than sea, which is occasionally punctuated by otters, seals, birds and monster migratory whales. And don’t be surprised if you hear a mysterious O Brother Where Art Thou heavenly soundtrack wafting down from the garden above; performers such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Ringo Starr have all played there: “I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves around it/I saw a highway of diamonds with no one on it/I met a young girl who gave me a rainbow/I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans/I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains.”

THE WHITE ELF

The baths were designed by award-winning architect Mickey Muennig, who moved from Joplin, Missouri to Big Sur some 40 years ago, and whom the locals affectionately call the “White Elf” due to his slight silhouette and shock of snowy white hair. The 76-year-old architect has built dozens of dazzling structures here over the years and truly sees the spirituality of the place. “Architecture is much more than just shelter,” he likes to say in his signature Missouri drawl. “It bonds a continuous and worldwide mystery to its inhabitants…. It’s about specific dreams and desires.” Muennig, whose architectural heroes were Frank Lloyd Wright and Bruce Goff, has found that gentle place between eco-architecture and modernism and his touch is everywhere here, from The Cooper Point House, a bunker-like residence made of glass, grass and wildflowers, which was built “as a temple to architecture and man” to The Caddell House, a Japanese-style wood-and-glass abode smothered by pine trees hundreds of feet above the sea. “Mickey knows the spirit of Big Sur,” is the phrase you hear often when talking to locals, almost as if its quietly oozing out of secretive speakers hidden in the trees.

Just up the long bend lies the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, buffeted by the thick Ventana Wilderness. A narrow, one-lane dirt path 16 miles from the nearest paved road is the only artery in or out. During the winter months, practitioners live on-site; in the summer months, the Center is opened to guests. Their bubbling hot springs are Japanese-style baths that promise to “soothe and heal”—if you can find them. Tassajara, being the first Zen monastery outside of Asia, was built with many secrets, and the baths are hidden like watery treasures.    If Esalen and Tassajara are Big Sur’s cradle of healing, the Post Ranch Inn is its belly of opulence. But it wasn’t always so. In 1848, one W.B Post, a freewheeling adventurer and savvy businessman, came from Connecticut and claimed the 160 acres that are now the Inn as his home base for hunting grizzly bears. On the site, he opened the Frusta Butchery and his red New England-style house, a registered historical landmark, still stands on Highway 1 across from the entrance of the Inn. The Post family raised cattle and hogs, too, and exported apples from a thriving orchard. W.B.’s youngest son, Joe, married a neighbor, Elizabeth Gilkey. Joe eventually bought up claims from both of their families, accumulating nearly 1,500 acres. Together, the adventurous couple ran the ranch and took hunters and fishermen on pack trips into the surrounding badlands. Over the years and generations, however, it grew difficult for the family to hold on to the old style of ranching. In the early 1980s, a close friend and neighbor approached Bill Post with the idea of turning the land into an inn that would preserve the integrity and history of the Post family’s property. After shaking hands on the deal, they sealed the Post partnership with a shot of Jack Daniel’s, which has since become the Inn’s unofficial drink.

The 30-room architectural homage to nature is astonishing in its native luxury and environmentally sensitive demeanor. No matter where you are on the property, it seems, you never lose the sight of either the lapping ocean or hulking mountains. Sierra Mar Restaurant, a dazzling glass structure that gives off a feeling of being suspended above the earth, features regional Californian cuisine and a Wine Spectator award-winning wine list. A dark, post-dinner walk reveals, almost fiendishly, a shimmering opalescent swimming pool and a sexy, discreet basking Jacuzzi, its heat rising into the cold night air like vaporous belly dancers (hey, after all the potent dinner wine it’s not so far-fetched).

The more the grounds reveal themselves, the more in awe one becomes. As if engraved into the mountains by a local cyclops, the Inn is built with reclaimed wood, glass, steel and stone—”organic architecture.” Muennig, who built the hotel in the 80s, had a clear vision of “luxury, sustainability and natural beauty… a timeless collision of respect for the land.” Every sincere whim was indulged: Guests are chauffeured in Lexus hybrids; the landscape is fecund with indigenous plants; the cleaning system biodegradable; and the grounds provide a habitat sanctuary for the endangered Smith’s blue butterfly, California red- legged frog, western pond turtle and California condor.

General Manager, Dan Priano, an amiable hippie-chic cowboy with big brown eyes and a wide-brimmed hat, describes Post Ranch as “the greatest meeting of land and a luxurious Shangri-La poised directly above the waves.”

It’s hard to leave the grounds, but when not soaking or nibbling your worries away, big nature abounds with thrilling hikes, sun-kissed yoga sessions, star-gazing spiritual lectures, sea kayaking or sunbathing below McWay Falls, an 80-foot-waterfall close enough to the ocean to be referred to as “tide falls.” The pirate-like enclave is only accessible by boat, so you better dig deep for your inner Jack Sparrow— and bring lunch.

But if you are looking for that truly illusory adventure, tucked between McWay and Partington Cove is Julia Pfeiffer Burns Underwater oasis. Burns, a tough, pioneering rancher, was one of Big Sur’s most respected residents until her death in 1928, and remains a local folk legend. And there’s good reason this cove remains hushed. Its azure waters—which contain at least three sunken ships, harbor seals, gray whales, fat colonies of abalone, oyster beds and otters—are volatile and dangerous, able to swallow up even the most experienced swimmer with its rough “seaweed soup” waters. A local abalone hunter warns: “If you are not a very experienced scuba diver, don’t even bother looking for the park…you won’t come back.”

A few miles away, and practically across Highway 1 from the Post Ranch Inn, is the venerable and fashionable Ventana Inn & Spa. Meandering over 243 acres of a wooded hillside, 1,200 feet above the rough sea, the Ventana Inn & Spa is quiet, secluded, and Edenic. The spa is world-class, embracing the curative essence of Big Sur through the use of its natural healing offerings. There’s the Organic Seaweed Wrap, the Santa Lucia Wine Wrap, the Ocean Salt Exfoliation or the Jade Foot Massage to choose from. And if you like flowers—who doesn’t?—there’s the nearby sea of wild mountain lavender, perhaps the largest collection in the world, appearing to be literally painted on the sloping hillside in a rumpus of purple and pink. Hmm…did Van Gogh ever visit Big Sur?

HUMAN NESTS, HORNED TOADS & HOLLYWOOD CRAB PLATTERS

Over the last few years, the Big Sur wilderness has become home to what people are calling “luxe camping.” In other words: yurts. Yurts, which at first glance look like modern-day pods that hobbits, if there were such a creature, would live in, can only be described as a hybrid of a tent and a cabin, replete with queen-sized beds, heat, lighting, polished pine wood floors, and French doors that open to decks that look out over the ocean. Surrounded by the Los Padres National Forest, Treebones, a former wood mill, and now dotted with bulbous yurts, is its own self-contained adventure paradise. Fanning out from home base in all directions like an untamed outback are historical sites, waterfalls, orange-crowned sparrows, black bears, bike trails, berry bushes, trout-filled crystal-clear creeks, horned toads, fern-rimmed pools, and picnic spots that would make Paul Bunyan blush. However, no matter how bushed you are after a day in the thickets, don’t dare leave before you spend a night cradled in the world’s only known “human nest.” This bizarre work of woven wood-art, part tree house, part eucalyptus-thatched den, was created and built by Big Sur artist Jayson Fann of the Spirit Garden. The “eco-sleep” bunk, which is entered by a wood ladder, is large enough for two and replete with an ocean view. At the first crack of dawn, the cacophonous bark of hungry elephant seals is jarring but it’s not too long before the enveloping sound becomes as soothing and natural as the crashing waves or gusts of salt-scented winds that abound.

But, hands down, the place to stay is Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn. Helmuth Deetjen, or “Grandpa” Deetjen as he became known, was on the run from the authorities in his native Norway when he came to Big Sur in the 1930s. The swashbuckling, pipe-smoking exile hunkered down in the densely wooded Castro Canyon, where he constructed a small barn from the surrounding redwoods and settled there with his wife, Helen, who liked to hold informal therapy sessions in the cabin while serving platters of crab, avocado and See’s Candies. (Local lore has it that occasionally Hollywood stars like Greta Garbo, Steve McQueen and Robert Redford would show up at the cabin for food and drink and dispense the latest Hollywood gossip.) The couple offered passers-by dinner and a bed in their cabin and, as word spread, built more cabins, becoming Big Sur’s first hotel. Grandpa passed away in 1972, but the inn and its quilt of wisteria, rose and maple-heavy cabins continued his legacy of quirky, informal hospitality. The bedrooms are dripping with romance: fire places, cushy beds, quixotic bookshelves, antiques, and in-room journals, in which guests are encouraged to write about their stay. The journals stay in the room—some even date from the 1940s. (“Thanks Helmuth for running away to Big Sur and building this den of enchantment”; “The only place that could save my marriage, hooray Deetjen’s”; “Pure blood pressure lowering…and dreamily romantic.”)

It is at Jade Cove, however, that Big Sur truly reveals itself. Quiet and secluded, the Cove’s beguiling greenish waters at first seem out of place, feeling more Caribbean than Northern California. A half-day spent here can feel downright dreamy. All that real world stress—bills, politics, jobs—gone. Today, it’s lounging, swimming, picnicking and, yes, hunting for jade in the shallows. In an odd way, the essence of Big Sur’s contradictory beauty is summed up here: Being seemingly faraway—at the end of the world—but in a safe haven that feels timeless. In fact, it’s the kind of place you could even meet a real live mermaid frolicking in the shallows, swathed in smooth jade necklaces, beckoning you out to her marshy roost (it’s been officially reported to local officials more than once!).  But it’s a fickle paradise. Some days the jade is so plentiful that it literally turns the entire cove a prehistoric milky green with unexplained “creatures” occasionally sending a thick spray of celery-colored froth into the air, while other days the jade can only be found at the tide level. While nibbling on lunch on the beach, don’t be surprised—or lose your appetite—if you see your neighbors “licking” their bounty; this temporarily eliminates the white color of the salt, allowing you to see the magnificent green of the jade beneath.

RITA HAYWORTH SLEPT HERE

Everywhere you go in Big Sur, the locals are offering you food. And nothing tantalizes the senses more than the sweet-smelling waft coming from the Big Sur Bakery. Built in 1936 by Frank Post’s daughter, Alice, the old ranch-style bakery, folksy and stylish, is gingerly nestled behind a gas station, and has the feel of your cool hippie aunt’s living room. As dawn breaks down the night, the smell of freshly baked bread perfumes the woodland, savory zephyrs of cinnamon twists, vanilla cream danishes, blueberry scones, coffee cakes, and crème quiches. Proprietors Michelle Rizzolo, Philip Wojtowicz and Mike Gilson all bring Big City resumes to this lovely outpost—your nose will tell you that. Aside from a place on Italy’s Amalfi coast, I’ve ever enjoyed a cup of coffee and pastry in such a sublime setting.

But it is Nepenthe (in Greek meaning “isle of no care”) restaurant that is the soul of Big Sur. Bill and Lolly Fassett created Nepenthe in 1949, where their aunt Dorcas would belly dance for crowds that included  Miller, actress Kim Novak, and singer Joan Baez. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton shot a dancing scene for their film The Sandpiper here, sidestepping and flirting madly deep into the morning. The Fassett’s imagined an open-air pavilion with good food, wine, dancing and stargazing. “It would be a place where people from up and down the coast would come and forget their cares,” they pined. The Fassetts quickly commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright protégé Rowan Maiden to build a restaurant “that appeared to have grown out of the hillside.” (According to Bill and Lolly’s granddaughter, Romney Steele, Rita Hayworth had owned the cabin, having fallen in love with the spot on a trip from San Francisco to LA when she was selling war bonds for the US government. It took her grandparents two years to find Hayworth, finally in Brazil, and get her to sign the papers for the sale.) Servers wore flowing skirts and knit purses for tips, and the place was home to monthly astrological birthday parties fueled by massive Jell-O cakes and other “elixirs.”

In the 50s, the restaurant became a sort of seduction den for wealthy playboy Harry Fuller, who lived just south at Castro Road.  Fuller, one of the more eccentric and mysterious legends of Big Sur, would instruct his ranch foreman to carve out a large, heart-shaped pond on his grassy land for every romantic conquest he had. (I see remnants of the ponds, unkempt sinkholes semi-filled with dirt, half-hearted romantic reminders of the late Casanova of Castro Ridge Road.)

“Nepenthe was at the center of Big Sur—if not what was Big Sur to many people,” says Romney. “Nepenthe acted as a stage, bringing writers, poets and musicians to speak and perform. Growing up there, the world came to us.”

Miller wrote in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch of Nepenthe: “There is another family I cannot pass over without a word or two, since here, once again, the children dominate the scene. I mean the Fassett family whose abode is “Nepenthe”, one of the show places along the Coast. Lolly and Bill, the parents, are busy seven months of the year running the establishment, which specializes in food, drink and dancing. The kids—up until recently, at any rate—specialized in raising hell. All five of them. The point about the Fassett youngsters is this—they give the impression of playing at being children. They revel in the fact that they are just kids, and that it’s the business of kids to have a good time. For inventiveness they are hard to match. Entering their quarters, if it’s an unexpected call, you have the feeling of being introduced to a simian world. It’s not only the chatter, the monkeyshines, the acrobatic, hair- raising stunts they put on, it’s the pandemonium they know so well how to create, and delight in creating—particularly when papa and mamma are not hitting it off so well. But who would think of raising the word discipline in their presence? Discipline would be the death of them.”

TROPIC OF PHANTOMS

It seems everything goes back to the Tropic Man in this “world fit for poets and spiritual exiles.” And skipping town before dropping in on the Henry Miller Memorial Library is akin to not paying a visit to Mr. Mojo Risin’s grave at Pere Lachaise cemetery when in Paris. The grounds are free and funky, bohemian and incense-perfumed, highlighted by a ping pong table (Miller loved to play ping pong with naked women), outdoor chairs, and an immense flower-garden. If you are lucky, you might even catch a glimpse of Neil Young, Henry Rollins, Patti Smith or members of the Grateful Dead playing an impromptu concert or reading poetry on the garden stage. In the fall, the garden is transformed into an outdoor starry movie theatre, showing movies like Bela Lugosi’s 1931 Dracula, Scorsese’s Kundun and Errol Morris’s documentary, Tabloid. Up the steps and into the house, once owned and occupied by Henry’s dear friend, groundskeeper Emil White—who inherited the property after Miller’s death in June, 1981—lies a modest, bucolic cabin with a treasure trove of the author’s finest pulp: non-fiction, biographies, letters, and out-of-print books. Under the glass tables lie rare editions and various paperback incarnations of Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Nexus, Sexus and Plexus (The Rosy Crucifixion), The Air- Conditioned Nightmare and, of course, many imprints of Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch.

In addition to books, rare watercolor paintings by Miller drape the walls, while recordings and magazines pile up in the corners. Like all of Big Sur, the lazy, placid days go by deceptively fast on the grounds, and before you know it the sky has darkened and the woofing seals can be heard from the nearby beach.

Time to head out of the misty kingdom—or is it? There comes a point in Big Sur, like other narcotic enclaves idyll for the grand “life dropout”—Bali, Goa, Ibiza, Costa Rica—that you have to leave… or there’s a good chance you’ll wake up years later in a blink of a butterfly wing; which, depending on how you look at it, could be The Dream or The Nightmare. Miller, who stayed for almost 15 years, wrote: “Most of the people who come to Big Sur are not concerned with undermining a vicious system, but with leading their lives on the fringe of society.” While Mickey Muennig likes to quip, “I came here for a two- week vacation…20 years ago.”

Thompson, who blew town after a few months, had another, more sober, view: “Some people stay in Big Sur for too long, but most have to move on after a good period of time, finding it ‘too slow’ or ‘too lonely’ for their tastes.”

At last count, there were roughly 1,000 residents of Big Sur, not counting, of course, the thousands of restless phantoms or “fog spirits” that drift in and out of town like the morning mist, filling up and emptying out, bathing and meditating, looking for that hazy balance between earth and “somewhere else.”

Either way, whether you are ebbing or flowing in El País Grande del Sur, a fluffy Kevah omelet with thick, sizzling swaths of applewood bacon on the cool, wooded patio of Café Kevah, which looms like some sort of gastronomical refuge on top of the world, is a nice send-off or welcome. Of course, Miller knew this 60 years ago, as he gazed out from this very empty, dusty bluff, his cabin home at the time, the only speck of humanity for miles: “Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here, it is unthinkable, here there is abiding peace, the peace of God, and the serene security created by a handful of good neighbors living at one with the creature world.”

Zen luxury has never been more grandiose.