Fire Monks Read Free Page B

Wilderness—where the knife-edged peaks and valleys of the coastal Santa Lucia Mountains cut a jagged relief against the sky. The Santa Lucias are young as mountains go—only two million years old—and with mountains, youth corresponds to verticality. In the Ventana, elevation can change abruptly, from six hundred feet to nearly six thousand at Junipero Serra Peak. The one similarity to Texas was the heat. It was blazing hot up on the ridge, in the open sun. A weather station in nearby Carmel Valley recorded an afternoon high on June 21 of 103 degrees Fahrenheit.
    From Lime Point, Colin could see in three directions: northwest toward Miller Canyon, west toward the ocean, and south-southeast toward Junipero Serra Peak, where the Indians fire had been burning for two weeks. Hazy smoke draped the ridges near Fort Hunter Liggett, a U.S. Army training center. Fire management personnel were based there in what is known as an “incident command post” in the incident command system (ICS), a multiagency emergency response framework implemented in disasters, from wildfires to hurricanes to terrorist attacks, which grew out of a devastating fire season in California in the 1970s.
    The smoke didn’t look much different to Colin from when they’d started watching the Indians fire. Lucky us, he thought, we got through all of that lightning without any new fire. But then he noticed an oddly shaped cloud, more vertical than horizontal. He got back in the truck and drove another two miles up to the ridge approximately three thousand feet above Tassajara, where he had an even more panoramic view. Though he didn’t know their names yet, he spotted the plumes of two lightning-sparked fires to the west—the Gallery fire, south of Big Sur, and the Bear Basin fire, north of Tassajara. “That was the moment I knew it was going to come in,” Colin told me later. “The thing that had protected us with the Indians fire was that the wind was blowing it away. This was going to blow right to us.”
    As Colin walked back to the Isuzu, a couple drove by in a Toyota Corolla—probably day guests coming down the road for a soak in the hot springs. Too much brake, he thought, as the Corolla lurched downhill, taillights blinking. Better to put it in a low gear and coast. Following a safe distance behind, he mulled over how to break the news that the fire was coming their way.
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    Occasionally a backpacker wanders into Tassajara on foot, but most people arrive via the road. As Colin did the first time, they have plenty of time to wonder, Where is this place? Tassajara sits at the road’s terminus, in a deep notch in the earth, rimmed by mountains. On the drive in, the world’s glitter and self-importance gradually fall away. Humility comes naturally when you are standing at the base of so much vertical rock from within Tassajara, or looking down into the valley from a trail in the surrounding wilderness.
    The first time I entered the coursing quiet of Tassajara, I felt as if I had landed somewhere I could truly rest—both out of my usual element and completely within the elements. There is no electricity in the guest cabins—light is obtained by kerosene lamp. There are no keys. The paths and internal road are earth and gravel. Residents silently greet one another in passing with a small standing bow called a gassho .
    The basalt and granite walls of the stone rooms, some of the oldest cabins, were pulled from the streambed 150 years ago. The walls of the founder’s hall were formed of clay from Tassajara Road. The roof beams in the kitchen were salvaged from a local stand of pine trees killed by beetles. The wood surfaces in the zendo were naturally finished with damp rags and monks’ feet. Wood, dirt, stone, bare skin: These are the materials Tassajara is made of. Natural, sturdy, porous, impermanent.
    The work circle, zendo, and courtyard between the guest dining room and