Big Sur... another moment of sublimity...

Our last day (after lecture) in the Steinbeck Institute took us south to (through) Big Sur for a fabulously photogenic tour of the southern coast accessible from the scenic CA Rt. 1. The photo above depicts a bridge apparently utilized in many automotive advertisements (think fast cars whipping around hairpin turns at 80mph with the surf, sand, and trees blowing incessantly and majestically in the background) and it is immediately obvious why the admen/adwomen would choose such a locale... it is simply hard to believe a place this beautiful exists, much less in the continental United States.

While the drive south to the town of Big Sur and our final destination of Pheiffer Beach was absolutely beautiful, it is hard (even for a moment) to not feel like you are on the verge of teetering over the edge of these curvy roads to oblivion... mere millimeters, it seems, from absolute obliteration on the rocks. As we hurried south, this imminent sense of natural power and dormant violence became more apparent... From the sheer elevation of the cliffs to the powerful wind and waves, it was easy to feel insignificant in the presence of such natural beauty.

The state of California has done an amazing job maintaining the natural authenticity of this coastline... very few homes and "McMansions" mar the coastal vistas you see below:

After taking several "pull out for photo" stops along the way, we stopped to grab snacks in the little township of Big Sur... quite an idyllic scene... in an effort to combat my infamous "low blood sugar blues", I consumed what must have been about 3,000 calories of yogurt covered pretzels... mmmm....

Our final destination in the Big Sur region was Pheiffer Beach... which was, in the words of one of our counterparts, tantamount to visiting "one of the wonders of the world...." The wind on this particular day was extremely intense... so much so that I feared for my camera's lens... so the pictures I took are primarily from the sides of the cliff faces as opposed to out in the open. The purple-hued sands can pack a punch when mother nature wants to smack you in the face! In spite of the winds, this was a wonderful natural experience (I thought) to "go out" on... bringing one final and interesting fusion of the land and sea elements so closely examined in our Steinbeck country endeavor. Big Sur was something special... something with a hint of secrecy and power that I don't think I'll ever forget... but don't take it from me--check it out for yourself...

Tomorrow, I plan to start my final retrospective on my experience in the 2013 NEH Steinbeck Institute... clearly, this was an experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life... and one I am beyond proud to have been affiliated with. I'll miss all of my Steinbeck buddies!

A marine expedition through the Monterey Bay...

Pelican on the move... from our chartered whale watching vessel... 

An early morning expedition on a whale watching vessel marked the symbolic closure of our explorations of Steinbeck's bay/sea-centric literature (Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, Tortilla Flat, The Sea of Cortez). While Steinbeck would always maintain some proximity to the ocean for the rest of his life (when he relocated to New York City with his third wife Elaine he purchased a seaside property up the long island sound in Sag Harbor), I wonder how much of his fascination/need for the great deep blue stemmed from his associations with his counterpart Ed Ricketts, to whom the ocean was beyond necessity. In America and Americans, the collected works of Steinbeck's nonfiction, there is an extremely brief piece titled "...like captured butterflies" in which Steinbeck recounts a conversation with his son about attending school--namely, how to survive it, and how to cope with its seemingly unending nature:

"It is customary for adults to forget how hard and dull and long school is. The learning by memory and all the basic things one must know is the most incredible and unending effort...School is not easy and it is not for the most part very much fun, but then, if you are very lucky, you may find a teacher. Three real teachers in a lifetime is the very best of luck. My first was a science and math teacher in high school, my second a professor of writing at Stanford, and my third was my friend and partner, Ed Ricketts..." (America and Americans, 142).

As we toured the deep blue Monterey Bay, I found myself drifting to thoughts of Steinbeck and Ricketts... especially as we passed the backside of Doc's laboratory, now sandwiched painfully between the terminus of the Aquarium and a series of luxury hotels and tchotchke store fronts:

Doc's  lab is back there somewhere...

How much of Steinbeck's association and obsession with the water was purely nostalgia? The friend-brother-teacher-partner-in-crime dynamic is a hard thing to find...

As far as the day of aquatic sightseeing was concerned, we had (generally) a great four hour outing. A few folks came down with an acute case of "vomitus maximus" (seasickness...) which definitely affected their enjoyment... funny how different a diesel powered fishing vessel "feels" from other boats... I've been out on sailboats from 20'-60' several times and never really experienced any nausea... but this time, I did feel a bit queasy...for a while... I wonder how much of it was a physical reaction and how much of it was a psychosomatic reaction to all of the "don't forget to take your dramamine or you are going to blow chunks" talk that was rampant the day of the trip... hmm...

The whales, while plentiful, maintained about the same distance from the boat (with one or two humpback exceptions) as our encounter with them off the coast of Hopkins... which was a little disappointing... I really wanted to get some hi-def shots of their faces with pock-marked barnacles all over!!! Dang! We did see quite a few jellyfish, Rizzo dolphins, sunfish (the largest bony fish in the sea!), and we did have a few blue whale sightings... unfortunately, the blues don't seem (or didn't this day) to put on the exhibition that their smaller humpbacked counterparts do...

After the initial voyage was over, a few of us headed back out to sea with Gilly to attempt to snare some squid... Gilly (Bill Gilly, our Stanford University co-director of the institute) is a true squid aficionado. We were lucky enough to have a few classroom lectures centered on squid and their extremely fascinating chromatophore cells (the pigment altering organelles that allow cephalopods to quickly modulate from one skin color schema to another), behavior, and communication abilities...  the "squid cam" videos taken on expeditions to Baja were incredible...  but I digress... back to the 'bay critters:

Sea lions! Notice their large stature and the little earflaps... these distinguish them from the smaller  harbor seals

Large and in-charge!

Humpback whale-tale!

Another humpback

The elusive blue-whale-tail (top center)

Humpback and baby part I

Humpback and baby part II

Now THAT is some crucial whale-tale... (humpback)

Rizzo Dolphins 

Lily with a water bottle full of micro jellyfish... never using that again...

Hopkins Marine Station's Fisher building from the boat....

Gilly and the Sea... fishing for squid...

Whales! Thar she blows! I need to spend some time with Ahab...

Humpback off the course of Hopkins...

Thar she blows! During one of our final outdoor discussions at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station, we enjoyed our lunch while a mother humpback whale and her calf did acrobatics off shore... most of these shots (unless noted otherwise) were taken from the shore with my Nikon D80 DSLR camera through a Tamron 18/200mm zoom lens on a high speed shutter setting. Just as the allure and mystique of snapping photos of the chubby harbor seals, otters, and sea lions had started to wear off, these two pulled a 30 minute exercise session within plain view of our picnic tables... First you see the spout of water (no photos of the spout unfortunately) and then the whales break the surface! The pair were particularly playful on this day (not sure if it was the weather, time of day, temperature of water or what...). Even our dedicated whale watching expedition (on a chartered fishing boat) did not render nearly as many photo ops (insofar as the whales were concerned at least...). Check it out:

While the whale watching was absolutely entertaining from a "National Geographic" perspective, it really inspired me to pick up another copy of Moby Dick for a much-needed re-reading. It has (I'm embarrassed to say) been many years since I have read Melville beyond the normal anthology selections (Bartleby the Scrivener, Benito Cereno). Susan Shillinglaw, our Steinbeck Institute English Lit director, teaches a course with both Grapes of Wrath and Moby Dick - both books alternate from a "general" to a "specific" chapter... a stylistic choice that Steinbeck likely "borrowed" from Melville (as he was apparently reading Moby Dick while composing Grapes of Wrath. Several of the other English teachers (obviously an AP text) taught Moby Dick and through some great discussions with them I am really interested to not only get back into Melville but to perhaps use the text in my own classroom at some point in the not-too-distant future (paired with Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath... naturally... I beg, borrow, and steal all my good material... the "white whale" will certainly take on a multi-dimensional significance!). I actually read Moby Dick for the first time in a team-taught interdisciplinary AP Language / AP US History course when I was in high school and it was phenomenal... which reminds me... I need to reach out to my social studies dept. cohorts when I get back...

Anyway, the whales were a hoot to see "live and in person." This experience, coupled with our fabulous tidal zone / tidepool discovery session with Gilly and the marine biologist staff at Hopkins has certainly warped my perspective (in a good way) on viewing these animals in captivity... the aquarium is awesome--don't get me wrong--but seeing these creatures alive in their own natural habitats is just another experience altogether... one I hope everyone will have a chance to experience on some level at some point in their lives!

Tomorrow, I'll upload some of our awesome shots from our chartered boat tour... while the whales were not nearly as active (frisky!), there were many more in attendance (and much closer to the camera). Dolphins, Malo Malo, Jellies, and other animals were there, too... Stay tuned!