David Vincent discovers Big Sur's hippy cabins and hiking trails | Travel | The Guardian 2/19/11 2:15 PM

To Sur, with love

Big Sur, the dramatic Californian coast that inspired Beat poets,
60s freethinkers and musicians, has barely changed since their
day. David Vincent discovers its hippy cabins and hiking trails

David Vincent
The Guardian, Saturday 20 June 2009

California dreaming...Big Sur's coastline. Photograph: Darrell Gulin/Getty

'The place itself is so overwhelmingly bigger, greater, than anyone could hope to make
it that it engenders a humility and reverence not frequently met with in Americans.
There being nothing to improve on in the surroundings, the tendency is to set about
improving oneself."

Henry Miller's words of wisdom on Big Sur are as true today as in 1957, I thought as I
gazed out of the window at the towering redwoods surrounding Deetjen's Big Sur Inn.
I'd come for a little quiet reflection in this Tolkien-esque hideaway and to hike the Big
Sur wilderness trails, just reopened after last summer's devastating forest fires.

Miller came to visit in 1944 and stayed for 18 years. He was hypnotised by the majestic
landscape, calling it "almost painful to behold". It inspired much of his work, including
Big Sur And The Oranges Of Hieronymus Bosch in which he fretted that the simple
joys of Big Sur would soon be lost to the "air-conditioned nightmare" of modern life.

He needn't have worried. It is much the same now as then. Admittedly, the summer
does bring the occasional parade of RVs, but only 1,000 people live here permanently.
Not many more than when American poet Walt Whitman opined about Big Sur in the
late 1800s and, in the 1920s, Robinson Jeffers's verse introduced the romantic idea of
its untamed spaces to his countrymen.

The razor-edge mountains, steep valleys and even steeper cliffs; the natural hot

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springs, waterfalls and deep swimming holes have inspired poets, writers, artists and
thinkers for decades: Jack Kerouac, Hunter S Thompson and Ansel Adams; bohemians
and beatniks. Later, the hippies put Big Sur in our consciousness - or unconsciousness
- in quite another way. They searched for enlightenment at such centres of study and
contemplation as the Esalen Institute. And, in the process, introduced America and the
rest of the world to the practical therapies and holistic ideas of primal scream therapy,
holotropic breathwork and the like.

Hollywood also swooned. Kim Novak, Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Steve McQueen,
Dennis Hopper, Ali MacGraw have all sought its isolation, as has Brad Pitt - pre-
Brangelina.

Big Sur is just five hours' drive north from Los Angeles and three south from San
Francisco, but it's a world away from both. The coast is wild and rugged, and lined with
sheer cliffs stretching 90 miles, almost uninterrupted, from Carmel-by-the-Sea in the
north to San Simeon in the south. The shoreline is near impossible to reach.

Inland for 30 miles, the tight jigsaw of green-capped mountains are also impenetrable,
save by mule and foot. And even that was not possible when the intrepid conquistadors
sailed up the coast some 450 years ago. They stayed in their galleons and continued
north. Two centuries later, the first Europeans set foot here, dubbing the wilderness,
"el pais grande del sur" - the big country of the south.

Barring a few loggers and mountain men, it remained a fortress to solitude until
Highway 1 was completed in 1937 and a small ribbon of the Big Sur coastline was
opened up. Blasted out of the cliff face, the road is a configuration of zigzags,
switchbacks, ascents and drops: the implacable Santa Lucia mountains of the Ventana
Wilderness thousands of feet above and the raging Pacific Ocean hundreds of feet
below. It is probably the most scenic drive in North America.

Inland, however, Big Sur remains a place of coyotes, rattlesnakes and mountain lions.
In the 1930s, this was where Helmuth and Helen Deetjen made their home and built
Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, a magical collection of cabins in a grove of redwoods in Castro
Canyon, and where I would spend the next few nights in cosy contemplation.

Deetjen, a Norwegian emigré, had been drawn to Big Sur by his love of the works of
Whitman and Jeffers. He believed Whitman's haunting Song Of The Redwood-Tree
had called him to live among "these huge precipitous cliffs - this amplitude - these
valleys grand" in the "flashing and golden pageant of California!"

And so in the canyon, Deetjen built first a redwood barn, now the restaurant and
dining rooms, and then, as their home evolved into the coastline's original roadhouse,
higgledy-piggledy wooden cabins strung out along Castro Creek.

Grandpa Deetjen, as Helmuth came to be known (even though he and Helen never had
any children), added new additions in the style of the cabins of his native Norway. All
were constructed with scavenged redwood planks. The vernacular is organic and
simple: hand-hewn beams and rough-sawn siding. It is basic but comfortable: good
mattresses, plenty of hot water and delicious food in the restaurant. Each cabin is
unique. Doors, windows, shelves, stairs - nothing matches. Rooms have names, but no
keys: Chateau Fiasco, Creek House, Faraway. Some are enveloped in wisteria, others a

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blaze of red maple foliage.

Looking out on to the creek from my room, Top Antique, which surveys much of the
property, I came face to mid-trunk with a towering redwood. It must have been 300
years old. Below, the damp canyon was a carpet of lush mosses, five-fingered ferns and
sorrel creating a natural soundproofing for the brook that rushed to the ocean. The air
was scented with pine.

On my first night, as almost every night, I had supper in the restaurant, four rooms
with a distinctly English farmhouse feel: white wooden walls, low ceilings, and full
height windows, dim-lit lamps, shelves stacked with blue and white china, cabinets full
of trinkets, and paintings of Big Sur and Helmuth Deetjen himself, sporting his
signature pipe and beret.

The Deetjens restaurant is one of the few places you can venture to of an evening, and
the best. There is no town of Big Sur, just a bakery/pizzeria, post office, general stores,
gas stations and two posh resorts dotted in three sections along the highway.

None of these places were here when Jack Kerouac sought the solitude of Big Sur in
1960. In the end, the isolation and darkness almost gave him a nervous breakdown. In
his autobiographical novel, Big Sur, his alter ego, Jack Duluoz, even hears the ocean
telling him "Don't hang around here" as he tries to capture the voice of the Pacific in
words.

Deetjen's, however, has always had a pull. Everyone from Joan Baez to the Beach Boys
has been here. Even Garbo allegedly paid "Grandpa" private visits, as did his mentor
Jeffers - the latter for stimulation of the mind.

When Deetjen died in 1972, he bequeathed the inn to a foundation set up for its
preservation. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places, though it was nearly
lost last year in the fires that swept through Big Sur, when 200,000 acres burned after
lightning strikes ignited the third-largest fire in California history. More than 20
homes were lost - as well as hectares of marijuana plants a few naughty locals were
growing illicitly under the forest canopy. It has taken a year to reopen some of Big
Sur's state parks and the trails, which had been blocked by hundreds of fallen trees or
disappeared in mud slides that came with the winter rains. Thankfully, many of the
trees, though burnt, have survived and the grasses regrown.

Over the next few days, I explored the fragile wilderness. I walked the 10-mile Old
Coast Road, the original coastal route, to the open-arched Bixby Bridge. Lush redwood
forests and creeks gave way to chaparral and a vista south east of the 3,700ft Pico
Blanco peak. Here, I watched peregrine falcons disappear in and out of banks of
encroaching sea fog. I climbed Buzzard's Roost Trail through groves of bay and laurel,
oak and redwoods, and sat and scanned the horizon for blue and humpback whales. I
huffed and puffed my way up the Hidden Trail and Ridge Trail to the bluffs of Andrew
Molera State Park to look down on the secret coves of the jagged Big Sur coastline,
stretching for miles.

Perhaps my favourite hike, and one just reopened, was to Mount Manuel. It took five
hours, walking through an old oak forest near the Big Sur river valley, patches of
exposed chaparral and fire-scorched wooded gullies. When I reached the main ridge

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path, I was rewarded with vistas of the Big Sur river gorge below. Eventually, after
much climbing, the Santa Lucia mountains came into view. At the summit, the 360-
degree panorama surveyed the whole of Big Sur: the Ventana Wilderness, the notched
coastline and the cliffs. Above me, a California condor glided on the powerful thermals
rising from the sun-baked scrub.

After my walks, I relaxed under redwoods on the shaded lawn of the Henry Miller
Memorial Library or in the Big Sur Spirit Garden - both a short drive north of
Deetjen's. Emil White, Miller's great friend, donated his home to house the library.
Miller actually lived on Partington Ridge - where he could usually be found parading
around in a jockstrap. This cultural centre dedicated to him houses a reference library
and bookshop. Foreign editions of his works - Tropique Du Capricorne, Le Monde Du
Sexe - hang on pieces of string from the ceiling. At the Spirit Garden, an outdoor maze
of exotic sculptures, cacti and giant twig "nests" filled with pillows, I climbed up into a
nest and snoozed for hours as world music played.

At other times, I lay on the windswept sand of Pfeiffer beach with its sea stacks,
natural arches and pounding surf; picked a path through brambles to the old pirates'
haunt of Partington Cove to watch the sea otters and seals frolic in a forest of kelp and
churning waves; or sat on a bench near the picture-postcard McWay Falls with its 80ft
drop straight into the ocean.

Relaxation didn't come any easier, however, than the hot tubs at Esalen. The Institute,
along with the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and the New Camaldoli Hermitage,
became the beating heart of Big Sur in the 60s, and remains so. Esalen, which opened
in 1962, is the intellectual home of the Human Potential movement, a blend of
psychological therapies and secularised spiritual practices, as well as Gestalt therapy.

Such thinkers as Arnold Toynbee, Aldous Huxley and Abraham Maslow would expound
at this "gymnasium of the mind" to the likes of Bob Dylan, Jane Fonda, Hunter S
Thompson and the odd Beatle. Much of its countercultural preaching and promotion of
eastern philosophies is now assimilated into the mainstream, although, for many,
Esalen will always conjure up the images of hedonism, free love and LSD trips that it
became synonymous with in the late 60s. These days, the Institute is at pains to
distance itself from such recreational activities. This is now a genteel place of work and
self-improvement, but is still gently pushing the envelope with courses as diverse as the
Islamic Jesus, Holistic Sexuality, Singing Gestalt and Dangerous Writing.

And the setting can't help but inspire the most jaded attendee: lush, manicured lawns
are dotted with cypress trees and beds of wildflowers, all intersected by streams and
edged by plunging cliffs.

Sadly, the Institute is shy about people arriving without booking a workshop or day
retreat in advance. In the past, too many people have come to rubberneck and titter at
nudity in hot tubs.

I had no such prejudices as, suspended halfway down a 500ft cliff, I floated and
bobbed in warm spring waters. The outdoor tubs are part of the minimalist cathedral
of glass barrel vaults and concrete construction that make up the bath and massage
complex. Below me, Pacific waves hurled themselves at the cliffs. Above, Scorpio
started emerging to fill the night sky. I began quietly reciting a few lines of Jeffers. It

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was pretentious, I know, but if I couldn't do it here, I couldn't do it anywhere.

"Civilised, crying how to be human again ... Lean on the silent rock until you feel its
divinity ..."

Just as I was getting in the flow, out of the dark, wafting from a nearby tub, I heard
some different advice being imparted: "If you don't want people looking at your nipples
so much, you shouldn't have them pierced." So much for Jeffers, this was more Henry
Miller territory. The old rogue, most of whose novels were banned at some point for
being too sexually explicit, would have loved such chitchat. I can just imagine him
plonking himself in the waters, possibly sans that old jockstrap, and uttering a few
sarky lines from Big Sur And The Oranges Of Hieronymus Bosch: "Thus far, Big Sur
has crept along with what's to hand. What is probably needed to put it on the map are:
a brothel, a jail and a gold-plated electric chair. It would be wonderful to have a
Jewish delicatessen, but that is probably asking too much all at once."

Fifty years on, all four are still absent. And visitors will find the essence of Big Sur
much as Miller left it.

Way to go
Getting there

British Airways (ba.com) flies Heathrow-San Francisco from £398 rtn inc tax. Dollar
Rent A Car (0800 252897, dollar.co.uk) from £106 per week, inc cover and taxes.

Where to stay

Deetjen's Big Sur Inn (001 831 667 2377, deetjens.com) rooms from £50 per night.

Further information

Esalen Institute: esalen.org.

Henry Miller Memorial Library: henrymiller.org.

Spirit Garden: bigsurspiritgarden.com. Tourist information: visitcalifornia.com.

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