Big Sur and the Cedars of Nancy Carlen

by Natalie Lopez '25

I don’t remember having an image of the “great outdoors” separate from Big Sur. Much of my conception of the world has been shaped by the geography of Monterey County, the coastal California region that is my hometown. However, there was something about Big Sur that set it apart from the rolling agricultural fields of the Salinas Valley and sandy beaches of the Monterey Bay. Literally, it is disconnected from neighboring cities and towns by the 1, a state route highway which runs north-south along the majority of the Pacific coast of California. Big Sur is only accessible to the outside world by this highway. To the west, it is flanked by the ocean, lending it some of the most gorgeous and famous coastal scenery I’ve ever seen. To the east, the Santa Lucia Mountains meet the ocean in a seemingly abrupt collision, as sharp cliff faces slope down to meet seakissed sand. It’s a magnificent sight, but hard to appreciate while driving. The two lane highway is winding, often showing no more than one hundred feet in any direction before visibility is cut off by a bend in the mountain side or steep elevation change.

The arduous pilgrimage was one my family made often. Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, in my childhood mind’s eye, is a forest of redwoods and hiking trails. The sun filters through the trees in dancing beams of light that coalesce across rushing streams. I remember being small enough to be carried across, then squirming to be let down so I could splash around and get my feet wet. 1 Even in January, the green tops of the trees extend as far as the eye could see until they reach the brilliant blue of the sea. As a child, it felt like I was entering a new world each time we drove over the concrete arch bridges which are as ubiquitous as the redwood forests they intersect. The Big Sur segment of Highway 1 was built between 1919 and 1937. Before then, it was only accessible through horseback trails over the mountains. 2

This isolation was seen as a boon to many early transplants, who came to Big Sur seeking refuge from the hustle of the city. Icons of counterculture and the Beat generation of the 50s and 60s helped to contribute to the reputation of a bohemian paradise among the trees, where inspiration flowed freely and art could have room to breathe. Paramount among them, New York City native and novelist Henry Miller, who settled in Big Sur in 1944 and would stay for almost twenty years. 3 After almost a decade abroad and a series of critical failures, Miller’s time in Big Sur became immortalized in his 1957 memoir, entitled Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. Miller’s descriptions of the secluded paradise caused many readers to seek out this Eden on the coast. 4 San Francisco-based publisher and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti owned a cabin that hosted Beat writer Jack Kerouc (and inspired his 1962 novel Big Sur). Photographers Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, as well as actors like Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles, made homes or extended visits in Big Sur.

This reputation as a home for alternative and iconoclastic personalities made Big Sur a point of pilgrimage for many young would-be revolutionaries seeking to create spaces that supported the era’s new philosophies and pedagogies. The Esalen Institute of alternative learning was one such place. Established in 1962, the Institute was founded on the principles of the Human Potential movement, which posits that all people can achieve extraordinary things and create significant social change. Esalen classes and workshops were developed to be a “laboratory for new thought,” with concepts of eastern spirituality like Zen Buddhism, yoga, and meditation meeting new psychological sciences. 5 Esalen workshops and initiatives were frequently run by guest instructors, drawing names like Susan Sontag, Abraham Maslow, and Deepak Chopra.

In 1961, Nancy Carlen drove across the United States from Boston to Big Sur to join the Esalen Institute. Carlen met folk singer Joan Baez while studying at Boston University. At Esalen, Carlen conceived of a new workshop to be held at the institute, and contacted Baez, who was living in nearby Carmel Valley, to host the “New Folk Music” seminar in 1964. 6 Together with Baez, Mimi, and Richard Farina, Carlen put on the first Big Sur Folk Festival on June 21, 1964. The event took place at Esalen, a beautiful property with grounds situated on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was a quiet affair, with seven acts in one day, but no big names other than Baez. Admission costs were $3.50. Most of the festival’s life span was similarly low-key and intimate. Friends of Baez would perform for little or no pay for an audience of about five thousand in 1968. It was designed as a performers’ festival, an opportunity for artists to have a reprieve together after a hectic summer on the festival circuits. The festival had no real advertising, no mass influx of out-of-towners, no paid performers, and all proceeds to Baez’s Institute for the Study of Nonviolence. It wasn’t supposed to be flashy or provocative. Carlen wasn’t trying to create a phenomenon; she was trying to educate people about music.

In 1969, the festival was filmed for the first time and became part of a documentary film called Celebration at Big Sur. That year, it took place in September, one month after the Woodstock festival in New York. Jerry Hopkins, writing for Rolling Stone, described it as “one of the season’s smallest (in attendance) and loveliest (in mood).” 7 Celebration featured performances from Baez, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and other artists on a raised platform at the foot of a pool, with the ocean behind them. With few remaining artifacts to remind the public of its existence (a poster for the 1966 festival sold online in 2014 for $700), Celebration allows the modern folk fan or a nostalgic aficionado the chance to experience the event in a small way. For six years, the festival took place at the Esalen Institute, before moving to the Monterey County Fairgrounds in 1970, and back to Esalen for its eighth and final year in 1971.

The Big Sur Folk Festival was not like Woodstock in ‘69, 8 or the Monterey Pop Festival in ‘67, or any of its contemporaries, mainly because it wasn’t trying to change the world or influence the landscape of popular music. To Nancy Carlen, the festival was supposed to be for the performers, not the audience. Founded as a workshop on the changing world of folk music, the festival was not intended to be big, with Carlen preferring crowds less than six thousand. The intimate nature of folk music was highlighted by the small crowd and anti-consumerist structure of the event. The ticket prices ranged from 3 to 5 dollars through its eight years, and there was virtually no advertisement to draw in the kinds of crowds that Woodstock or Newport saw. Big Sur isn’t the kind of town that was set up for those kinds of events. Esalen is located sixteen miles south of the town proper on a two-lane highway, on a cliffside without parking large enough to sustain a festival crowd. Logistically, it should not have been successful. Yet, Big Sur worked because it wasn’t trying to be anything but what it was: people who loved music deeply sharing it with each other.

Even as an ostensible “grown up,” being in Big Sur feels like stepping into a fantasy world. It’s one of the most famous destinations for nature lovers and outdoor enthusiasts, and yet it feels like a secret that only I can share with a chosen few. I feel the same way about my favorite folk artists. Sitting my friends down and putting on my favorite Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell record feels like cutting open my own chest and placing my still-beating heart in their hands to poke and prod and examine. It’s a measure of immense vulnerability and trust to bring someone else into what has always been only my sanctuary. I think Nancy Carlen understood that: the unique magic of folk music and of Big Sur. She took a place that had been a famous refuge and allowed it to remain that way, despite the easier and more profitable alternative.

Hiking in Big Sur as a child and later as a young adult, past the waterfalls and rushing creeks and the redwood groves, I found fleeting, momentous peace in a turbulent world that I came to realize was not built for me. In my own way, I found the truth which the bohemians of the 60s were searching for in the same mountains. Big Sur isn’t built for anyone; it just is. The winding roads and cliff sides have no love for money or prestige. Big Sur’s popularity among tourists rivals that of Yosemite, attracting millions of visitors each year, but without comparable infrastructure to support that many people. Instead, visitors must adapt to it. Folk music is like that. It’s jagged, uncomfortable, the kind of hike you can’t do without the proper equipment. I have loved both Big Sur and folk music all my life, knowing that they could never return my devotion. I wouldn’t want them to. To love something is to be changed by it, and I like it just the way it is.

Endnotes

1. If what I’m describing feels impossibly idyllic, I implore you to look at pictures of redwood forests and see for yourself.

2. Nowadays, landslides caused by heavy rains close the roads multiple times a year, and residents are cut off from the rest of the world.

3. Miller’s most famous work, the semi-autobiographical novel Tropic of Cancer, was banned from importation to the U.S. and became the center of an obscenity trial after being illicitly smuggled into the country.

4. In 1981, a year after he died, a close friend dedicated the Henry Miller Memorial Library, now a community and event center located in an idyllic grove of Big Sur redwoods, in his honor.

5. If this sounds similar to ideas of the New Age milieu, that’s because one grew out of the other.

6. It was a big year for Baez, who also headlined the Newport Folk Festival and briefly toured the U.S. with the Beatles.

7. Jerry Hopkins, “Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young,” Rolling Stone, October 18th, 1969, No. 44.

8. Although modern journalists have been eager to point this out, the contemporary antithesis was usually cited as the Newport Folk Festival.