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April 9, 2008
Big Sur in the Spring - Part 1
The last thing the world needs is another beautiful picture like this of the Big Sur area. Yes we all know it's unbelievably scenic with its 5000+ foot peaks rolling down to the sea, and yes it's largest block of coastal wilderness on the West Coast, and yes Ferlingetti, Kerouac and all those beatish types famously hung out down laying on a patina of literary mystique to the embarassment of natural riches already present - but like one of those sumptuous Beach Boys songs that you've heard too many times and think you're sick of, the fact is, no matter how many times you may have heard about how beautiful it is, it really is all that and more. What can you do? All those car commercials and movies, it's like the Grand Canyon, you think you've seen it but you just don't know how beautiful it really is until you're there.
Sometimes you just get lucky and sometimes you make your own luck, and I did the latter when decided to ditch my plans to race back to the Bay Area after our trade show in LA and take the slow road. I wanted to bust back home, but I was pulling out of LA and it was just too beautiful. LA is unbelievably gorgeous on those early spring days after it's rained and the air is sparkly and clear. Mt. Baldy, San Gregornio, San Jacinto - everyone always talks about the mountains in Denver, Sante Fe, Salt Lake City but what about LA? It ain't all OC and Costcos people, you've got a ring of 10,000 foot + peaks surrounding this city. In fact, to get a little nerdy and geographcially confrontational here, in terms of relative elevation from city to peaks that you can actually see from downtown, there's no other city in U.S. that has this kind of visual drama - sea level to 11,500 feet with over 20 peaks in the 8000 ft+ range? Denver, Santa Fe, SLC and their ilk don't even come close. And as I drove out of the LA basin the views were practically bringing me to tears, so I decided that rather than blasting home on the I-5, I'd take my time and see something real.
So I cut over the mountains and stopped in Santa Barbara for the night so I could take my time winding up the coast the next day. I spent the night in the Motel 6 of my youth. This is the Motel 6, the very first one ever built in 1962. It's right next to the beach, and when I was a kid my parents booked a room here for 2 weeks every spring, and we'd drive all night from Portland through the rain and wake up in this sunny paradise by the sea. You have to know how much it rained in pre-global-warming-Portland to understand how magical this alchemical transformation of rain into sun was. Me and my brother would go to sleep in the backseat of the car with rain pecking against the windows, and wake up with palm trees, sunshine and the ocean - it was sheer magic in that way that things are magical when you're a little kid and I'll never forget it as long as I live. I have to say, it's kind of strange to have an emotional attachment to something as sterile and ubiquitous as a Motel 6. It looks pretty much the same as all motel 6's, but it must be a little different because every detail was reverberated in my brain - the texture of the fake stucco walls, the open outdoor stairway, the curves in the thimble sized pool. Suddenly I found myself thinking of my Dad getting ice from the ice machine, our boogie boards drying outside our room, jumping up and down on the beds.
The next day I got up and headed north. I stopped at the Salmon Creek trailhead with the intention of just walking in a mile or so to see what was there, and almost instantly I came across this beautiful swimming hole. This is all of a 1/4 mile from the road, and no one was here - what the hell? All those RV's racing by, and right next door the cool clean water, the waterfall and sun, this is heaven on earth. So I did what any semi-intelligent simian with half a brain stem would do, I stripped down and swam. And I've come down from the mountain and I'm here to tell you that it was delicious my people. There are moments in life when everything comes together and you say this is what it's really all about, well, this was one of those moments. Thank you Jehovah or Shiva or Gaia or whichever one of you deities sponsored this cathartic moment for me.
So of course after my swim I was energized and decided to follow the trail up the hill for a ways, and it was unbelievably beautiful - the wildflowers, the sunny day, it was just intoxicating. Stay tuned to part 2 to hear about the wildflowers and the rest of my hike up to the ridge of the Santa Lucias.
Posted by Hall at April 9, 2008 8:31 PM