If you’ve ever driven on the Pacific Coast Highway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, you’ve seen Big Sur, the dramatic series of dark cliffs, deep canyons and plunging peaks that form the California coastline south of the Bay Area.
I’ll leave the rest of the descriptive phrases to the travel books, but let it just be said that this is a very impressive nature preserve. Lawrence Ferlinghetti owned a rustic cabin in Big Sur’s Bixby Canyon, under the large white bridge on the Pacific Coast Highway (US 1). In the summer of 1961 he persuaded the increasingly troubled and alcoholic Jack Kerouac to go on a solitary retreat there to get his head back together.
Ferlinghetti is a good poet but may be a crummy therapist, because the trip turned out to be about the worst thing for Kerouac in his then-fragile state of mind. He was frightened by the dark elemental surroundings, and several nightmarish episodes that took place in Ferlinghetti’s cabin, including a ghastly attempt at relating to a woman, are described in Kerouac’s most depressing (but fascinating) novel ‘Big Sur‘.
Before the Beats discovered Big Sur (Ferlinghetti had bought the cabin not long before Kerouac’s famous visit), Henry Miller was there, and wrote a book called ‘Big Sur and the Oranges of Heironymous Bosch.’ Richard Brautigan wrote a book called ‘A Confederate General From Big Sur.’
Big Sur played a big role in the Sixties. The Esalen institute is there with its hot tubs, and a 1969 musical gathering featuring Joan Baez and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young was immortalized in the film ‘A Celebration at Big Sur.’
A friend drove me through Big Sur several years ago. I’m from the East Coast and am not accustomed to those swooping, curving mountain roads. I must say, though, that whenever I peeked out from between my fingers and stopped screaming I was very impressed by the natural beauty of the area.
4 Responses
Great article, do you know whats the current status of the cabin? Still there, is able to get visited?
The cabin is still there. Easy to find. At the north end of Bixby Bridge at PCH take the dirt/gravel road that was carved into the side of the mountain above the canyon. This road takes you to the Old Coast Highway. Before you arrive at the junction of the Coast Hwy (perhaps a half a mile) keep your eyes looking to the right (down the slope). About 20-30’ below the road level you’ll see a small cabin, nothing fancy. That’s Ferlinghetti’s Big Sur cabin. Not open for visits. There are several other small homes scattered throughout the canyon. A creek flows thru the canyon to the ocean.
Whole lotta F#€%ing going on. Jack and Jackie. And her son watching. Messed up.
At 6 o’clock in the morning in Lakewood, Washington, I realize that the photograph that I purchased and framed still to hang of the Bixby Bridge, which I slept under with a beautiful young woman named Lydia, who kept me warm, holds much more significance to me now. We had hitchhiked to Big Sur, got off at the Bixby Bridge, and a young hippie like us who basically lived level area right under the bridge on the north side let us share his space. Every day he went up on the highway just a few steps from the camp, literally, and held a sign saying “spare groceries“. He had said there was a kind of commune up the trail where people ran around naked all day. I got a tick in my shoulder so we had to hitchhike back to Berkeley to the free clinic.
But reading this right now, blows my mind because years later I got into Henry Miller to some extent, and my cousin Roy, who sold drugs back then gave me a copy of Coney Island of mind. And Kerouac. A friend of mine worked with his daughter in Ellensburg at the Valley Café around the time she wrote her book.