Big Sur

Today we drove Highway 1 the length of Big Sur. Named by the Spanish colonists in the 18th century El Pais Grande del Sur, this piece of coastland was wild and relatively remote till Highway 1 was built as recent as the 1930s. For those of a certain generation, it has featured in many places in our culture. The Beach Boys sang about it. Robinson Jeffers wrote poetry about it. Richard Brautigan wrote novels about it, and so did Jack Kerouac. And who could blame them. Its rugged beauty is difficult to describe without superlatives - it is certainly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Home in Scotland has wonderful mountain/sea landscapes, but here the wealth of vegetation and wildlife is stunning. And that combination of glowing jade blue-green water splashed with foaming white surf is magical. I can photograph it (this is just an iPhone snap; the real pics must wait), though not as well as my illustrious camera-bearing forebears. And on that I must divert.

I needed a replacement cable release and dropped into the camera shop in Monterey this morning and got engaged in conversation with the helpful owner. Naturally, the name of Ansel Adams came up. "Yup, Ansel used to come in here for his stuff." Well at least we have one thing in common. There was a beautiful black and white print by Adams' printer proudly framed on the shop wall. The owner urged me to go to Point Lobos State Natural Reserve (Ansel went there often, I learned), so we did. It was beautiful. That combination of weird rock formations, cliffs, coves, crashing surf and gleaming blue ocean. And seals with their pups. And if that wasn't enough, a flock of Brown Pelicans flew in front of me. Can one place have so much beauty?

I'll leave the last words to the poet Robinson Jeffers, from The Beaks of Eagles*:

"An eagle's nest on the head of an old redwood on one of the
precipice-footed ridges
Above Ventana Creek, that jagged country which nothing but a
falling meteor will ever plow; no horseman
Will ever ride there, no hunter cross this ridge but the winged
ones, no one will steal the eggs from this fortress.
The she-eagle is old, her mate was shot long ago, she is now mated
with a son of hers.
When lightning blasted her nest she built it again on the same
tree, in the splinters of the thunderbolt.
The she-eagle is older than I; she was here when the fires of
eighty-five raged on these ridges,
She was lately fledged and dared not hunt ahead of them but ate
scorched meat. The world has changed in her time;
Humanity has multiplied, but not here; men's hopes and thoughts
and customs have changed, their powers are enlarged,
Their powers and their follies have become fantastic,
The unstable animal never has been changed so rapidly. The
motor and the plane and the great war have gone over him,
And Lenin has lived and Jehovah died: while the mother-eagle
Hunts her same hills, crying the same beautiful and lonely cry and
is never tired; dreams the same dreams,
And hears at night the rock-slides rattle and thunder in the throats
of these living mountains.
It is good for man
To try all changes, progress and corruption, powers, peace and
anguish, not to go down the dinosaur's way
Until all his capacities have been explored: and it is good for him
To know that his needs and nature are no more changed in fact
in ten thousand years than the beaks of eagles."

* Thanks to the Beach Boys for introducing me to his work, on their 1973 album Holland, which we played in the car today.