For good or ill, Northern California has a reputation (at least outside of California) as being a haven for New Age (and otherwise somewhat offbeat) thinking and activities. I don’t think that label is accurate. But, it seems reasonable to ask, if the label isn’t accurate, how did the region end up getting tagged with it anyway?
Look no further than the Esalen Institute (and Hot Springs) in Big Sur. I’ll withhold judgment on whether it is the top New Age-ish destination on the coast, but Esalen is perhaps the most iconic New Age-ish destination on the California coast. Their website: http://www.esalen.org/
Esalen is a “retreat and workshop center.” And as their website admonishes, “Esalen Institute is accessible by reservation only. Unfortunately, it is never possible to just stop by and take a look around.”
That is too bad, because Esalen is an amazing location – as you would expect at a Big Sur landmark – and a historical landmark. Founded in 1962, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg visited and apparently “taught” there (and perhaps drank heavily; see, for example, Kerouac’s novel Big Sur, which doesn’t mention Esalen specifically but you can get a sense of what those days may have been like). http://www.esalen.org/info/faq/faq1.html#locate I'm a fan of Kerouac’s work, and so this is a big deal to me.
These days, workshops are interesting and varied (but in my view nowhere near as interesting as it would’ve been to attend while Kerouac was there).
Food is communal, served in a large dining hall, and the sort of generally healthy stuff that you would expect to be served at a place like this. As I understand it, the cafeteria is staffed by folks who are essentially in residence for at least several weeks, and are basically getting a work-study sort of discount on workshops at the Institute.
In the next post: Answering the question posed in the title of this post. Nothing like a little suspense…
--COTC
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