Tassajara

Tassajara is one of the most stunningly beautiful places I have ever been in my life. It's nestled in a narrow canyon in the Ventana Wilderness area of the Santa Lucia Mountains. To get there, you drive a few hours south of San Francisco until you pass through Carmel and to a tiny, tiny town called Jamesburg. In Jamesburg, you pull off onto a dirt road. The next fifteen miles will take you at least an hour--or maybe two--to drive up a winding, rocky dirt road up the side of a mountain, through a pass, and then down the other side.

Here's a view along the way:

And then you arrive at Tassajara, which is a hot springs resort in the summer and a working Zen Buddhist monastery in the fall, winter, and spring. Here's the zendo:

I was there for work period, which is a time at the end of the guest season when everything is made ready for winter (there's another in the spring to get ready for guest season). During work period, volunteers get to stay for free, and are fed all the amazing vegetarian food one can eat (including bread, which Tassajara is famous for), and get to visit the hot springs daily (oh! the hot springs! I seriously considered becoming a monk right then and there!). In exchange, you provide labor. During my week there, I worked in the kitchen to cook food for everyone, shoveled rocks to create a new drainage ditch, cleaned guest rooms, deep cleaned the zendo, deep cleaned the dining room, washed windows, and chopped vegetables. (You'll notice a theme, as I lack the carpentry or plumbing skills that would have had me doing skilled labor.)

I also went to morning zazen--I got up at 5:15am to meditate for an hour and attend morning services. My brother is a monk at Tassajara, so I got a bit more of a taste of monastic life by helping him in some of his duties. One morning it was his job to ring the wakeup bell--we got up at 5am (it is still pitchdark at this hour), and ran from one end of the community to the other, madly ringing a cowbell the whole time. It was great fun.

While the best part was absolutely the time spent with my brother, I also loved the opportunities for hiking and the hot springs. The hot springs are made up of the hot plunge: mineral water kept at around 108 degrees; the warm outside bath: a mineral water hot tub, outside, kept at around 100 degrees; the steam sauna: cooled steam directly from the spring; and the cold plunge, aka the creek. I spent many blissful hours going from the sauna to the creek to the sauna to the creek to the hot plunge. I never knew before why people loved hot springs so much!

Steve and I also went on several hikes. The longest was to the wind caves, about seven miles round trip. They are sandstone caves that have been carved out of the cliffs by wind and water, and they're stunning. Here's a neat shot from inside the cave and then one of us sitting in it.

I took a panorama video while standing inside the caves:

Last summer, the area was devastated by an enormous wildfire. The destruction, and the return of new growth, is pretty evident in my photos. Tassajara itself was seriously threatened, was evacuated, was attacked by flames from all sides, and was only saved by the combined efforts of five monks who disobeyed the evacuation orders to stay and fight for their home. The story is incredible, and now that I have been there and can imagine being there with flames sweeping down from all sides, absolutely terrifying. The account written by the monks who were there is well worth reading (and make sure to check out the photos, too!).

Check out all my photos on Flickr. I'll be back in the next few days to post tales of time in San Francisco and NYC!