VISITING BIG SUR VICARIOUSLY

Coastal California Painting by Paul E. Marquart

Yesterday, we purchased several ice plants from Lapp’s Nursery near Winchester, Tennessee, and I’ve since been pondering my many side trips to Big Sur, California, where ice plants bloom freely during May.

This morning I leafed through photos of my brother Paul’s paintings of the California coast and found one that he had painted of the Big Sur area. Viewers of the photographs can even see two human figures climbing around in the rocky area. Still, none of his paintings show the wild ice plants that grow along Big Sur highways we traveled during California visits.

However, I happily remember those pink carpets covering the Big Sur area. The ice plant, a native of South Africa, was brought to the California coast during the 1970s to control erosion, but State Park officials no longer find the plants attractive or useful and encourage Big Sur residents to get rid of them. So much for aesthetics, they say, as the plant is very aggressive and can quickly cover large areas, crowding out attractive native flowers.

 

My Window Box Ice Plant

During May, if you drive along the Big Sur coast and look toward the surrounding mountainsides, you feel uplifted by seeing those pink carpets. I always liked vacation travels to the Pacific Coast, where the ice plant’s blooms engendered feelings of freedom and uplift in me.

The plants I bought yesterday are drought-resistant, which means I don’t have to worry about watering daily, so I find ice plants even more attractive. I look at the photo of brother Paul’s painting, imagining Big Sur, then back at my kitchen window box flanked by ice plants and feel my Tennessee imprisonment slowly lifting.

It’s peak ice plant season along the rocky coast of California and near my kitchen window box, so perhaps I’ll celebrate my birthday month by buying more mementos of past adventures along the California coast to satisfy my constant wanderlust. But I have serious doubts.

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan. Painting by Paul E. Marquart.

 

 

 

LEGACIES OF BEAUTY

Painting by Paul E. Marquart

 

During these spring-like days when life becomes flowers and soon-to-be gardens, I leaf through two black notebooks with photographs of my deceased brother Paul's paintings and gardens he planted in northern California a few decades ago. I'm proud of Paul's considerable talents in both fields, and I viewed his art firsthand several times, but I never tire of revisiting the photographs his wife took and relinquished to me on a visit about five years ago.

Although the paintings of flowers don't have his usual signature symbols—tiny people embedded in forests and other landscapes —I laugh when I discover them because Paul seemed to think people should be a part of any garden or landscape when he created art.

 

Paul's Garden

I once sat in the garden depicted in the photograph above, wearing a heavy jacket on a summer morning because the wind often blows cold in northern California, even in the summer. I loved the sights and scents of this Paradise Paul had created. He had a checkered past, beginning with mischief-making at an early age as the firstborn boy in our family, and he showed little interest in scholarly pursuits while in school, but he was someone I think Henry Miller would've taken under his wing as an artist living at Big Sur, California. However, Paul would not have liked the idea of being poor, although he would've enjoyed the community and stayed at Big Sur awhile during an adventurous period of his life.

I didn't communicate with Paul for twenty years until one day the phone rang, and I recognized his lazy southern drawl at once. "You need to come out to see us," he said. "I have this old pick-up you could use to tool around in the redwoods." At the time, I was employed at a daily job and told him I couldn't visit, but he continued to talk about his painting, and I told him I wrote poetry. "I'll trade you a painting for a poem," he said, and a few weeks later, we made the exchange. Two years later, I went out to northern California on vacation, and we reunited.

I'm proud to own a few of Paul's paintings and the two black notebooks. Paul began practicing art early, illustrating my father's tales about Jimmy Bear, but he didn't become a serious artist until the 1990s, when he gardened and painted until his death a few years ago. I like to pen the lines "art is eternal" when I look at Paul's paintings and gardens. And when winter closes in, I spend a few hours a week thinking of how art can alter a person's vision—and lead him/her to create a legacy of beauty.

 

 

BACK TO BIG SUR

No, I'm not riding around on the central coast of California. I'm rooted in place in frozen south Louisiana. Somehow, thoughts about this scenic stretch of California I visited many summers made me feel warmer in the 28 to 34-degree weather we're experiencing this week (and the same slated for next week). My computer screen saver has held a graphic of Big Sur for several years, and Sunday I indulged in a "soap" movie entitled "The Sandpiper" to get a good look at the seaside cliffs and the Pacific Ocean views. Although some viewers would've been drawn to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor romancing in this setting, I just wanted to view the region's pristine scenery again.


I’ve had peak experiences while traveling to and staying in a state park at Big Sur. It's a fantastic stretch of undeveloped countryside unmarred by billboards and commercial activity. A trip along the Pacific Ocean through this rugged region is a spiritual experience, and during some of my visits, I wrote a ream of poems while riding along the narrow two-lane highway. Views from cliffs are remarkable, but I've read that travel on the highway has been hampered by a total of 55 landslides. However, I never felt unsafe, even in a large RV with seven people aboard.


For nineteen years, Henry Miller, who lived at Big Sur, described the area as "the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look." He paid tribute to Big Sur in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, and one summer we visited the Henry Miller Library and bookstore to get our copy of this classic. I've seen several documentaries featuring Jack Kerouac and his gang encamped in the area, and I understand Big Sur is still a major attraction for the literary-minded.

On one of our stays at Big Sur, we turned into the drive leading to the Esalen Institute, where the Human Potential Movement developed during the 1960s, but guardians of this New Age Movement immediately surrounded us. We withdrew and planned a trip to Carmel, where my granddaughter and I visited the poet Robinson Jeffers' home. When the guide asked for a volunteer to read one of Jeffers' poems, I stepped out of the circle of tourists to perform for my granddaughter. The guide remarked, "You read like a poet," and Kimberly snickered.


During that trip, I had an envee to visit the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center that called for a drive up a steep 12-mile dirt road, but fellow travelers in the RV gave the destination a thumbs down, so we backtracked to San Simeon to see the lavish Hearst Castle — the ostentation was visual overload for me, I might add.


The only drive that inspired a bit of fear and awe in me was the Bixby Creek Bridge en route to Carmel, which is now closed again. If you Google photos of this structure, it’ll be evident why I had some trepidation about crossing this bridge.


Most of the beaches in the Big Sur region are surrounded by private property owners, but we often stayed at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park under the umbrella of towering sequoia trees. We made side trips to see seals and otters at Point Lobos, wind whipping around us strong enough to drive me indoors… to begin planning the following year's travel on this "All American Road" touted by the 1996 National Scenic Byways Program.


Just a bit of California warmth on this frosty morning in the sunny South — following a call just received about boiling water because of low psi. Back to daydreaming about Big Sur!




Painting by Paul E. Marquart; photograph by Laurel Marquart.

HOW GREEN IS THE VALLEY

Rain falls on the 4th of July, threatening the flag raising, Arts and Crafts Fair, the cake contest, Cornhole Contest, the parade, and the Air Show, not to mention the fireworks blowout at Sewanee, Tennessee where I live part of the year. However, for Valley farmers near Cowan and Winchester, Tennessee, I give thanks for the recent heavy showers.

I’m glad I went down to Lapp’s in the Valley to garner my week’s supply of corn yesterday. This small market of plants and produce has been selling yields of the sweetest, most tender corn I’ve tasted in many a year, and the fields, amply watered by rain this year, are still a robust shade of green. In fact, the entire valley is a verdant carpet right now, and not all the ironweed and milkweed along roadsides have been sprayed or mowed down. However, recently we did have to search for Chicory plants to photograph for a book of poetry I’m writing.

Tennessee harvested 830,000 acres of corn last year, and if the Valley is any indicator of production, growth should exceed that harvest in 2017. I missed National Corn Cob Day June 11, but I appreciate the hoorah given this succulent vegetable. Coupled with barbecue ribs, corn on the cob is the quintessential food for 4th picnics, and I have six ears on the kitchen counter waiting for consumption.

The corn sold at Lapp’s is homegrown in fields behind his flower and produce market, and he should know how to cultivate this plant because he formerly lived in Amish country near Lawrenceburg, Tennessee where farming is part of the Amish lifestyle. Some of Lapp’s produce includes giant tomatoes that exceed the size of the usual store-bought mushy-fleshed tomatoes, and when cooked make delicious homemade tomato sauce for pasta.

Lately, I’ve enjoyed riding down The Mountain from Sewanee to The Valley — Cowan, Winchester, and Tullahoma — a drive that reminds me of coming out of the desert onto the curving road leading to Big Sur, California in the spring/summer. Sometimes I envision living in the Valley where I can look up at The Mountain, rather than living on the Cumberland Plateau and searching for places where I can peer over the bluff at the Valley below; however, I have no desire to live on the bluffs near Sewanee because I’ve heard that winds and storms in these areas are fierce.

Rumors are that property in the Valley is $100,000 cheaper than on The Mountain, but, alas, temps in the summer are often as much as eight degrees hotter. Yet, when I round the curve near Winchester and see the green fields (unfortunately, some of which are brown from herbicide enthusiasts) stretching out in the foothills of the Cumberlands, and the red barns gleaming on the landscape, I have a yen to drop down into a more pastoral setting … where I can buy fresh, sweet corn every day when it’s in season.

Happy 4th! Hope your picnic lunch includes a sweet ear of corn!

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

VISTAS…

From steps of St. Mary's Convent,
Sewanee TN

Every morning when I wake, I open the French doors in the living room and look out at the woods bordering our front yard to get my shot of a vista for the day. Although I’m not a hiker or camper, my parents were inured to both activities, and I was taught to appreciate the outdoors. A copse of trees, as well as a great stretch of desert, are sacred sights to me. One vista often reminds me of another; e.g., the road leading to the valley in Cowan, Tennessee reminds me of the curvy Highway 1 leading to Big Sur, California, sans Pacific Ocean on one side of the road.

I’m always inviting people to view different vistas, and today my thoughts turn to Ben Blanchard, who will be married in Austin, Texas this afternoon. Ben once accompanied his mother, Janet, one of my best friends, on a trip we made to California. Ben was ten and a reluctant traveler, and he balked at every curve when we traveled the road to Big Sur and Point Lobos, often dozing or sulking in the back seat of the car as we passed through magnificent scenery – rugged cliffs, canyons, long meadows, and redwoods, stopping to explore narrow inlets where we could get a better view of the greenish blue waters of the Pacific. I’m not sure it was an entirely miserable experience for him because a few weeks ago, word came that he wanted to take his bride on a honeymoon to California – and guess where he wanted to go? Of course, he wanted to retrace his steps up Highway l to Big Sur!

You never know when you have effected a “travel take” with offspring, but if they’re exposed to vistas at an early age, they’re likely to develop wanderlust and appreciate the outdoors. I never fully appreciated the trip to Diddy Wah Diddy (California) that my father initiated back in the 40’s and earned the title of “luxury-loving girl” because I wasn’t too keen on the idea of campouts along the way. However, by the time I reached my twenties, I had a full-blown case of wanderlust. And, in my thirties when I went to Iran and lived there two years, people thought I had lost my mind because I enjoyed my sojourn in the southern desert of Khuzestan – so much so that I’ve written four books about the experience. In my forties, I began traveling to California every year and became enraptured with the deserts of southern California and Nevada.

A few months ago, Pinyon Review published one of my poems that revealed my intense feelings about the desert entitled:

Carson City, Nevada:”

I could live here

under the rock outcroppings

away from the hot summer wind;

the sun would make me a cover

and I would become dry and brief;

my words sharp as the sage

skirting the Sierra foothills;

I could live like a mountain lizard,

scuttle with the ground squirrels

at the sound of footfalls,

suffering no invasion on the desert’s face;

I could live here

where my heart could dry out

from a lifetime of mistrust;

I would believe the night stars,

sleep in a grove of cottonwoods

rustling dryly,

feeling only kinship.

Landscapes affect me deeply, as they do most poets. When Robinson Jefferson moved to Big Sur, he became spellbound with the rugged coast near Carmel, writing that “the coast had displayed all its winter magic for us: drifts of silver rain through great gorges, clouds dragging on the summits, storm on the rock shore, sacred calm under the redwoods…” I was just as enchanted with my first glimpses of that rocky California coast, and the wild beauty of it had a lasting effect on me. Actually, if I had my druthers, I’d live in Carmel, California, but my senior’s purse won’t allow that luxury.

I’m happy that Ben will get to see all the natural beauty of the central coast of California when he makes a return trip to the scene that he scorned as a young child – this time with fresh eyes, and I expect the experience will be overwhelming for him and for his bride. Meanwhile, I will think about his trip vicariously and continue to record the beauty of the landscape here on the Cumberland Plateau, including a photograph of the Cumberland Valley as seen from the backyard of St. Mary’s Convent accompanying this blog.