Colors

Another thing you notice about Big Sur (and towns nearby) is how floral the landscape is. Top photo: a flowering tree in Carmel.

Bottom photo: succulent ground cover behind Robinson Jeffers's Hawk Tower in Carmel. By the way, locals call the house in the distance the "butterfly house" because of its odd roof. Someone told me this house is on the market for twelve million dollars.

Redwoods

Allen stands inside one of the redwoods at Pfeiffer State Park in Big Sur.

Everything at Big Sur humbles you, reminds you of your smallness.

The Ocean at Big Sur

Big Sur is primal. It brings you to an encounter with your deepest self. Everything there is about height and depth, the vertical; whereas here in the flatlands of Ohio, where I live, it is all about the horizontal, flat, seemingly endless space. The change of geological perspective was good for me. My room at Esalen was right next to the ocean. My windows were open and I could hear the ocean constantly. It was quite loud and utterly contagious.

The Long Journey, another view

This photo shows another view of the odd geological features that are sometimes found beside Highway One near Big Sur. This angle shows how close the rocky soil is to the highway. On the other side of the road, not visible in this photograph, is a steep cliff. At the bottom of the cliff, or course, is the ocean.

The Long Journey

Along Highway 1, near Big Sur, California. This is me standing at the base of one of the most curious land features along this highway.

Many people come to the Esalen Workshops in order to put their experiences into a context. They want to express their pain without being trite or luridly confessional.

During my workshops, I saw people dealing with all the aspects of the human experience with perseverence, courage, and dignity. I saw people laugh (great celebratory laughter) and I saw them weep at what they had written. It all happened in the most supportive atmosphere I have ever experienced.

Big Sur is an excellent setting for writing because so much of what is going on in the landscape mirrors our own interior journey. The ocean and the rocks are important symbols of experience; however I found this roadside phenomenon to be most characteristic of people's experience at Esalen. This is not stone; it is a mixture of sand, clay, and small stones, shaped by the wind and the rain. It crumbles easily and yet it has a deceptive appearance of solidity. This geographical feature is right next to the highway, and it makes me recall one of my favorite poems by Theodore Roethke:


In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones. ...


--excerpted from "Journey Into the Interior" by Theodore Roethke

Something that happened at Esalen

She was tall and slender. She came into the workshop in a sleeveless blouse. She had a tattoo encircling her upper arm. From something she'd read to me earlier, I knew she had a dying child. She listened to my prompt and wrote for twenty minutes. She read. It was a delicate ending to the book she would someday write. I could see the book in my mind's eye. When she finished reading, I closed the book gently and put it on an imaginary shelf. I wanted to cry because the book was so beautiful and now it had ended.