Bien Sur

I had spent the day in Notting Hill. It was my last day in London, in England, after four months of living abroad. I left my hotel, a narrow Victorian conversion near Paddington station, and wandering to Portobello Road. It was not a market day, however, so I came away with only a few errant scarves, some Mediterranean food, and a homeless stalker. Having evaded him, and eaten the food, I determined it was time to visit Harrod’s.

My best friend back home had this tin of Earl Grey tea that he swore by. He’d purchased it in London, at Harrod’s (that was the brand), a few years previously and despite attempts at rationing, was nearly done with it. You could order it online, but the price was exorbitant. So I’d promised I’d see what I could do in the way of picking up a tin or two while I was in the country. It was Christmas time, after all.

Knightsbridge was the area I needed, and coming from Notting Hill the best way (by foot, I was at this point too poor, and desperate for all the scenery I could still get, for the tube) was by foot, across Hyde Park. So off I went. The late afternoon sun shone down with the filtered timidity and peace that comes at that hour, especially in Northern Latitudes. Everything was golden, crisp in the winter air, and for once, not raining.

Hyde Park was beautiful and full of people enjoying the holidays and the sun, two things I doubt often coincide in London. Every moment was more precious than the last, or any before, because I knew that in a matter of hours my adventures would be at an end and I would be back home, no longer able to jump to Norway on a whim or get lost on an ancient, winding cobblestone street somewhere between the Louvre and the Quick Burger where I’d had dinner once. I already felt the pang of nostalgia, though I was still there. The accents of small children crying out in mirth as they ran in circles around each other, their diction belying their social class, their neighborhood, but all pure and happy. People walked with dogs, with children, with lovers, or in groups I could not label. I walked alone. I liked it that way, and still do. You see much more when there’s nothing else to look at.

The park is a big one, and it’s previous status as a hunting ground for kings seemed plausible (it’s a fact, actually). I would miss the history, too. But I knew there were things to look forward to, a reason I would not refuse to get on the plane at the last moment and forsake all I had ever known to exist in a world I loved in so many more ways. I had left Paris, hadn’t I? And that had been the hardest.

In California, in the United States, there were things for me to do. Things I had to do. Things I needed to accomplish before I could get back here where my heart so desperately wanted to cling, like a barnacle that finds the post it likes best. There are other piers in the sea, however, and unfortunately I had to go home to find and conquer them. Plus, there were adventures to be had on the other side of the world I hadn’t gotten to yet. I had been thinking of one adventure in particular for years, but strangely more so inthe months I was in Europe. Odd, with my drive to see these other countries so removed from tiny Tehachapi, but I kept being drawn back to thoughts of Big Sur. Having grown up loving the rolling hills to the south of the Sur, I was always intrigued by the rugged Northern stretch of the Central Coast. My father loved it, I knew. My mother said she would not take me, it was too dangerous. This combination naturally meant that I had to go the second I could, but the opportunity had not yet arisen. I knew little about it, only rumors. I had, for some reason, not even googled it, and so therefore the mystery was far more vague than it should have been. With nary an image to put to the name, I knew only that it was a place I had to, without compromise, find.

These thoughts, balancing where I was and what little good I foresee in where I was to go (I really didn’t want to leave, if you can’t tell) filled my sun-dappled brain as I made my way across Hyde Park that afternoon, bundled in my beloved fur coat. A group of people, one of many, approached me. Two men and a woman, all perhaps around thirty. The moment I spoke, I knew they were American.

As they neared I heard them discussing friends of theirs they might meet up with somewhere. And then, in that flash where passing strangers may alight into one another’s conversations for moment decried by a collision of physics and acoustics, I heard: “I really just need to get up to Big Sur.”

They said more about why and what and who, but it was so fast, and then they were gone. In that moment, on the other side of the planet, in a country where people knew “Los Angeles” and “San Francisco” perhaps and no other city near my home, in a public park, in the most incidental and mundane of passings, that is what I heard.

I have a lot of suspicions about fate and coincidence, and refuse to define, defy, or deny either, but I cannot deny that of all the things that could have been said to me in that moment, that was perhaps the best. I had to see the Sur. Stronger than had to, even, if there is a word for that. I suspected I was in love with the place, despite having never been there.

So as soon as I could, I went.

Such an enigma. Right there in the center of the most prominent coastline of the most prominent state of what is likely the planet’s most prominent country, there is a rugged abyss, equal parts bucolic and otherworldly. It’s a curious thing, especially when one considers the beaches of L.A. and San Francisco that bookend the central coast, which is generally more rural and sparse—but Big Sur is more than that. So few people have been here, and while to me it feels, like Yosemite, a necessary awareness for anyone who can find a way, any way, there is something essential to its isolation. I feel every human soul would benefit from knowing its crags and lichen, but part of its allure, its magic, is the secret of it. An open secret, but it seems only some, deemed worthy by whatever thought pattern, coincidence, or mishap led them here, are thereby blessed with its knowledge. Surely, there are those immune to nature (a tragedy upon their souls—and for those whose circumstances prevent them I offer no judgment but count only my own blessings), those who would not see the hand of God if it slapped their face, or the essence of peace and happiness unless its wicked, false, doppelganger jumped out of a Louis Vuitton handbag. There are those, though, who do find this place. I tell my friends and acquaintances to come with utmost passion and eagerness, for I know my urgings will not lead to a spoiling influx of people—most will still not come, and those that do I will know have passed the bar.

My heart leaps with delight when I find the names and stories of those who have known this place before me. My father, first and foremost, whose occasional mentions of his beloved “Big Sur” (in connection with my mother’s cryptic “I’ll not take you, the road is a death trap”) gave me hope of a magical Eden hidden in the midst of one of the Western World’s epicenters. My hopes were high and the reality, the soaring eyries of stone plummeting straight into the roiling blue, the brush and red woods clinging to the crevices and crowning the skyline, the homes of wood, and rock, and water speaking of cultured elegance with the language of rustic truth, the reality surpassed what I might have hoped for.

The names of others I recognize who’ve been here, loved here, include many I look to in other realms, and to find them here mentioned in local annals of history and legend merely indicates that whatever my taste and aspirations are, they are consistent and not alone. Robert Redford, Jimi Hendrix, Henry Miller (perhaps the most famous local inhabitant), Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth (once owners of the point on which my most beloved restaurant Nepenthe now sits), Janis Joplin, members of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, (Hitchcock heroine), William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies, Jaime de Angulo, Robert Louis Stevenson, Tiburcio Vasquez, these are merely a few.

My heart aches, as it does for Paris, but Big Sur is near and attainable.

Los Angeles is a place where souls go to die. Big Sur is where they may go to breathe.

My favorite places are Big Sur and Paris. Others are wonderful too (Yosemite, Zion, the Rockies, Norway, and Taos spring first to mind), but for me, Big Sur and Paris emanate a quintessential essence of what it is to die with no regrets, never wishing for more, for different, for better. There is no better. They are perfection, and a reminder of the personal perfection in each of us, a kind both inherent and discoverable. Call that God, if you like, I don’t know what it is, but its some of that highest form of good that flits through our world, and us, from time to time, like a good glass of wine or a child’s smile, helping another in need or breathing air fresh from the salty face of the spraying sea, the truth in a lover’s eyes or the smell of the first rain on dry ground.