I can't look at any of my photos from this evening at Nepenthe in Big Sur without immediately going back there. I feel the same enlightenment in my chest, the same peace in my soul, the same joy in my mind as we sat on the deck in the early evening just killing time. As the sun sank into the Pacific, the light only got better, growing more golden, drawing the sky in a deeper blue and turning the trees more and more into shadows and producing some great images.
I love scenic drives and known or historic routes. Route 66, Highway 61, Route 1 on either coast. This view of the Bixby Canyon Bridge in Big Sur is what the trips on these roads are all about -- new views and new adventures.
I descended a dusty gravel ridge
Beneath the Bixby Canyon Bridge
Until I eventually arrived
At the place where your soul had died
Barefoot in the shallow creek
I grabbed some stones from underneath
And waited for you to speak to me
-- Ben Gibbard, "Bixby Canyon Bridge"
This is one of my absolute favorite photos. I took it on our honeymoon when we stopped at Nepenthe solely because Jack Kerouac wrote about it in Big Sur. In between lunch and dinner, we ordered snacks -- a salad and french fries, I think -- and a little wine and enjoyed the late afternoon light over the cliffs and the Pacific.
From the baths we go to Nepenthe which is a beautiful cliff top restaurant with vast outdoor patio, with excellent food, excellent waiters and management, good drinks, chess tables, chairs and tables to just sit in the sun and look at the grand coast -- Here we all sit at various tables and Cody starts playing chess with everybody will join while he's chomping away at those marvelous hamburgers called Heavenburgers (huge with all the side works) -- Cody doesn't like to just sit around and lightly chat away, he's the kind of guy if he's going to talk he has to do all the talking himself for hours till everything is exhaustedly explained, sans that he just wants to bend over a chessboard and say "He he heh, old Scrooge is saving up a pawn hey? cak! I got ya!"
-- Jack Kerouac, Big Sur
