2014

Nepenthe is a medicine for sorrow, literally an anti-depressant – a "drug of forgetfulness" mentioned in ancient Greek literature and Greek mythology, depicted as originating in Egypt. The word nepenthe first appears in the fourth book of Homer's Odyssey: "Then Helen, daughter of Zeus, took other counsel. Straightway she cast into the wine of which they were drinking a drug to quiet all pain and strife, and bring forgetfulness of every ill." In 1947, Lolly and Bill Fassett moved with their five children into the Log House in Big Sur. Once a getaway for the Trail Club of Jolon, the cabin is perched on a hillside overlooking the south coast of Monterey County. Big Sur, with yellow genesta popping in August heat; purple lupine tangling with sage on mountains shrouded in fog, was a wild sanctuary. Bill and Lolly imagined an open-air pavilion with good food and wine and dancing under the stars. It would be a place where people from up and down the coast would come and forget their cares. Working with Rowan Maiden, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, they sketched out their vision. Legendary Big Sur builders, Frank and Walter Trotter built the structure using native materials; redwood, hewn from the canyons and adobe bricks, which Lolly made with her own hands. People came, not just from the ridge-tops and canyons, but from all over the world: vagabonds, poets, artist, lovers. Many know of Henry Miller’s years in Big Sur, but few are aware that his first home on the coast was in the Log House, above Nepenthe. Novelist Lynda Sargent took in the penniless Henry Miller and gave him a place to set up his typewriter during the day and lay his head at night.

The Santa Lucia Mountains are part of the Outer South California Coast Ranges, in the Pacific Coast Ranges System. Like all other Pacific Coast Ranges, these mountains are close enough to the Pacific Ocean and high enough to force incoming moisture upward, making the west side wet and fit for conifers to grow. This creates a rain shadow over Salinas Valley to the east, which is considerably drier. The higher peaks receive some snowfall during the winter. The first European to document the Santa Lucias was Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542 while sailing northward along the coast on a Spanish naval expedition. Cabrillo originally named the southern portion of the range the Sierras de San Martín, as he was passing the area on 11 November, the feast day for Saint Martin. He named the northern part Sierras Nevadas because there was snow on it. The present name for the range was documented in 1602 by Sebastián Vizcaíno, who had been tasked by the Spanish to complete a detailed chart of the coast. Passing by the range on 14 December, he named the range Sierra de Santa Lucia in honor of Saint Lucy of Syracuse. The first European land exploration of Alta California, the Spanish Portolà expedition, camped on the coast near Ragged Point at the foot of the mountains on September 13, 1769. Prevented from continuing north along the coast by the rugged Big Sur cliffs, the party turned inland, finding a rugged pass northeastward through the mountains. The rough trail required much improvement by the scouts, and it was September 24 before the party emerged from the mountains at the San Antonio River near today’s settlement of Jolon.