Sea cave on the Big Sur Coast, Bixby Bridge in the background. I grew up twelve miles from the southern terminus of what can be construed as the Big Sur Coast. The grand vistas of a roiling sea battering the rugged shoreline are juxtaposed with redwood-lined creeks, whose headwaters are way up the gullies in the Santa Lucia Mountains.
Big Sur’s shocks the system like a dip into the ocean on a gray-coated New Year’s Day, it’s always been a refuge for artists love spring in Big Sur. The place itself is so overwhelmingly bigger, greater than anyone could hope to make it that it engenders a humility that puts us in our place on the scale of grand.
Some of my earliest memories were of my puke bag as we wound our way around the towering cliffs a thousand feet above the threatening pounding surf far below. As a child it was the most terrifying thing in the world; I like the drive much better now! The place is alive with memories for me, as over the decades I have visited dozens of times. Sometimes I’d just drive here when I had some thinking to do. Santa Lucia point draws me in like a magnet after a family funeral when I have some thought collection to do.