Big Sur: You Can Go Home Again

What a trip! I love being on the road, the serendipity of it all. Except:

1. I miss home.

2. I run across so much stuff (shoot so many pics, make so many notes) that it’s frustrating not being able to communicate it all. Fragments:

    I’m back home from a doozy of a trip. Left San Luis Obispo around 11 AM Saturday sunny morning, north on Hwy. 1. By the time I got to Cayucos, it was foggy. Ahh! Northern Californian consciousness kicks in. I like the fog (grew up in San Francisco).

My body adores Southern California.

My mind revels in NorCal.

Sirius music was on a roll. Just 2 examples:

-Jimmie Rodgers, Blue Yodel #3: https://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Blue+Yodel+No+3/3WMJfN?src=5

-Muddy Waters backed by the Rolling Stones, Mannish Boy: https://grooveshark.com/#!/search/song?q=rolling+stones+muddy+mannish+boy Oh yeah!

Got to my house (built it in late ’60s). near Esalen. Ehren, the caretaker was there, said I could spend the night. (He lives in a tuned-in tiny home on the road above.

   Ehren is a stone mason, in his 30s, surfer, fisherman, gardener, hunter, explorer. He keeps the house and grounds beautifully. He’s like an extension of and extrapolation on all the things I did or wanted to do when I lived in Big Sur. Cross-generational soul mates.

   We went for a swim in the pool (creek-fed water, no chlorine). Later that afternoon I had a beer at Nepenthe. That night I had dinner at Deetjen’s, by far my favorite inn in all the world, the ambience of the dining room with candles and chamber music as soulful as it was 50 years ago. That night I invoked former-resident executive privilege and got into the hot springs at Esalen. Mmm.

   I’m goin’ home…home, bom bom bom bom bom-bom… 

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

5 Responses to Big Sur: You Can Go Home Again

  1. Ummm…to me it begs the question how did Mickey Muening get on your shit list, there has got to be a story there.

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