Jeffers's Country

A horseman high alone as an eagle on the spur of the mountain
over Mirmas Canyon draws rein, looks down
At the bridge-builders, men, trucks, the power-shovels, the
teeming
end of the new coast-road at the mountain's base.
He sees the loops of the road go northward, headland beyond
headland, into gray mist over Eraser's Point,
He shakes his fist and makes the gesture of wringing a chicken's
neck, scowls and rides higher.
I too
Believe that the life of men who ride horses, herders of cattle on
the mountain pasture, plowers of remote
Rock-narrowed farms in poverty and freedom, is a good life. At
the far end of those loops of road
Is what will come and destroy it, a rich and vulgar and bewildered
civilization dying at the core.

ROBINSON JEFFERS, "The Coast-Road" (1937)

AS A CHRISTMAS GIFT to each other in 1914, a husband and wife paid six dollars for a return-trip mail-coach ride down the rugged Coast Road from their Carmel home. As they traversed the stormy, somber day, their driver regaled them with Big Sur lore. The couple learned of the man who killed his father with rat poison and married his stepmother; the man who had taken a trip to San Francisco, where he was shanghaied, eventually managing to escape and return home to Big Sur only to die shortly thereafter; the hermit who ordered pilot biscuit through the mail but had no teeth with which to chew; and the old man who lay alone dying and could not care for the forty beehives outside his house. As they navigated the narrow lane carved into the hillside, the driver pointed out the precipice from which a wagonload of bodies from a shipwreck had toppled down the mountainside, never to be fully recovered. In all, the couple passed but a handful of homes during their thirty-mile trek into Sur country. These stories were set against a dramatic backdrop that made a deep impression on the visitors, who noted 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."

It was this meeting — of an artist and a powerful landscape — that set in motion a relationship destined to shape the way the outside world perceived the Big Sur country. This was the introduction to Big Sur for the poet Robinson Jeffers, whose name would soon become synonymous with this coastal region. His narrative and epic poetry, set within this awe-inspiring landscape, won great popularity throughout the country and abroad beginning in the 1920s, bringing a familiarity with "Jeffers Country" to a population that had never traveled to this rugged coast. In the following decade, Jeffers's work earned him distinction as one of the few poets ever featured on the cover of TIME Magazine. By the close of the century, nearly forty years after his death, Jeffers was still considered California's greatest poet.

Significantly, Jeffers's verse began with the assumption that people belonged in this place. He portrayed Big Sur inhabitants not as interlopers but as individuals whose lives were etched out of the formidable landscape. Jeffers's characters ranged from incestuous to noble and their stories unfolded in relationship to scenery that had commanded Jeffers's attention during his visits. As he later remarked: "Each of my stories has grown up like a plant from some particular canyon or promontory, some particular relationship of rock and water, wood, grass and mountain." In these poems the land did not suffer at the hand of its people but remained a constant, powerful force that dictated the options available to its inhabitants. Jeffers extracted what he considered the essence of the coast to craft his poetry and in so doing unintentionally helped transform the landscape he loved. Countless readers felt compelled to visit this storied landscape. But Jeffers did more than call attention to a remarkable region; his work helped define a distinctive conservation ethic for the Big Sur country.

A PLACE IN TRANSITION

When Jeffers made his first venture into Big Sur in 1914 he encountered what would have passed as a western scene from a bygone era. Residents relied on animal-powered transportation and lived without electricity, telephones, or indoor plumbing. The area still retained its ranching character, with a smattering of active and abandoned lumber, limestone, and gold-mining operations tucked into the mountainsides and canyons. But a closer look at the landscape revealed several perceptible changes that situated the Big Sur country in the modern era. In 1906 the Monterey Forest Reserve introduced a new level of bureaucracy into this backcountry, where locals had had to instigate the postal service and build their own schoolhouses. In tandem with the designation of the forest, this region gained favor with tourists as well as those who could relocate their work and home to an appealing location. The 1910 census revealed that for the first time a full quarter of the coast's residents were professionals and artists. As its popularity grew, Big Sur's connection to agriculture and industry would diminish. A Monterey newspaper reported as early as 1906 that extractive industries were giving way to tourist priorities along the Big Sur coast. National Forest records later revealed that beginning in 1915 the agency issued a steadily declining number of grazing permits and a steady increase in residential use permits. No longer solely an agrarian outpost by the early twentieth century, Big Sur was becoming increasingly prominent in Monterey County and beyond.

Like many other transplants to California in the early twentieth century, Jeffers felt drawn to the West's young culture and dramatic scenery. Though born in Pennsylvania, Jeffers had spent a portion of his childhood in European schools and attended college in Southern California before moving to the central coast. He established himself in the artist's community of Carmel-by-the-Sea, where he and his wife, Una, built Tor House and raised their twin sons. From here, Jeffers could entertain the many visitors who sought contact with the bard, but his introverted nature compelled him to plant a small forest around his home, into which he could retreat from admirers and focus on his work. Situated in the southern part of the Monterey Peninsula, Jeffers's Carmel home was an ideal launching point for his work and recreational trips into the Big Sur country. He found his poetic inspiration most readily on the days of winter rain and summer fog, when Big Sur's natural elements appeared even more imposing. Jeffers's powerful verse...