The Natural History of Big Sur

The Natural History of Big Sur PDF Author: Paul Henson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520917790
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
Each year millions of people visit the area of rugged California coastline and wild mountains known as Big Sur. Finally here is a book that is both a natural history of this beautiful region and an excellent guide to its extensive public lands. The first section introduces the area's geology, climate, flora, fauna, and human history. The second section describes selected sites, trails, and features that are mentioned in Part One. Although Big Sur is world famous for awe-inspiring scenery, it is less known for its great ecological diversity and its significance as a haven for many species of terrestrial and marine wildlife. In no other part of the world do fog-loving coastal redwoods thrive on one slope of a canyon while arid-climate yuccas grow on the other. Similarly, sea otters and cormorants live near dry-climate creatures like canyon wrens and whiptail lizards. The area's staggering beauty and forbidding wilderness have inspired artists, poets, naturalists, and hikers—and also real estate developers. As increasing tourism, development pressure, and land-use decisions continue to affect Big Sur, this book will do much to heighten awareness of the region's biotic richness and fragility. Written in nontechnical language, with generous color photographs, drawings, maps, species lists, and a bibliography, it will attract both the casual and the serious naturalist, as well as anyone concerned about preserving California's natural heritage.

The Natural History of Big Sur

The Natural History of Big Sur PDF Author: Paul Henson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520205109
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Book Description
Each year millions of people visit the area of rugged California coastline and wild mountains known as Big Sur. Finally here is a book that is both a natural history of this beautiful region and an excellent guide to its extensive public lands. The first section introduces the area's geology, climate, flora, fauna, and human history. The second section describes selected sites, trails, and features that are mentioned in Part One. Although Big Sur is world famous for awe-inspiring scenery, it is less known for its great ecological diversity and its significance as a haven for many species of terrestrial and marine wildlife. In no other part of the world do fog-loving coastal redwoods thrive on one slope of a canyon while arid-climate yuccas grow on the other. Similarly, sea otters and cormorants live near dry-climate creatures like canyon wrens and whiptail lizards. The area's staggering beauty and forbidding wilderness have inspired artists, poets, naturalists, and hikers—and also real estate developers. As increasing tourism, development pressure, and land-use decisions continue to affect Big Sur, this book will do much to heighten awareness of the region's biotic richness and fragility. Written in nontechnical language, with generous color photographs, drawings, maps, species lists, and a bibliography, it will attract both the casual and the serious naturalist, as well as anyone concerned about preserving California's natural heritage.

Big Sur

Big Sur PDF Author: Jeff Norman
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738529134
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Book Description
Big Sur is a river and a region on California's Central Coast. Extending for 75 miles along the Pacific shore, from south of Carmel to north of San Simeon, the Big Sur Coast is defined by the backdrop of the rugged Santa Lucia Mountains as they abruptly descend to meet the sea. For millennia the home of native people, Americans and Europeans began to settle Big Sur country even before California became a state. This book combines outstanding photographs from 40 collections, ranging from family albums to institutional archives.

The Hermits of Big Sur

The Hermits of Big Sur PDF Author: Paula Huston
Publisher: Liturgical Press
ISBN: 0814685064
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
Between World War II and Vatican II, as Italy struggled to rebuild after decades of Mussolini’s fascism, an eleventh-century order of contemplative monks in the Apennines were urged by Thomas Merton to found a daughter house on the rugged coast of California. A brilliant but world-weary ex-Jesuit, who had recently withdrawn from a high-intensity public life to go into reclusion at the ancient Sacro Eremo of Camaldoli, was tapped for the job. Based on notes kept for over sixty years by an early American novice at New Camaldoli Hermitage, The Hermits of Big Sur tells the compelling story of what unfolds within this small and idealistic community when medievalism must finally come to terms with modernism. It traces the call toward fuga mundi in the young seekers who arrive to try their vocations, only to discover that the monastic life requires much more of them than a bare desire for solitude. And it describes the miraculous transformation that sometimes occurs in individual monks after decades of lectio divina, silent meditation, liturgical faithfulness, and the communal bonds they have formed through the practice of the “privilege of love.”

Big Sur

Big Sur PDF Author: Shelley Alden Brooks
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520967542
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Book Description
Big Sur embodies much of what has defined California since the mid-twentieth century. A remote, inaccessible, and undeveloped pastoral landscape until 1937, Big Sur quickly became a cultural symbol of California and the West, as well as a home to the ultrawealthy. This transformation was due in part to writers and artists such as Robinson Jeffers and Ansel Adams, who created an enduring mystique for this coastline. But Big Sur’s prized coastline is also the product of the pioneering efforts of residents and Monterey County officials who forged a collaborative public/private preservation model for Big Sur that foreshadowed the shape of California coastal preservation in the twenty-first century. Big Sur’s well-preserved vistas and high-end real estate situate this coastline between American ideals of development and the wild. It is a space that challenges the way most Americans think of nature, of people’s relationship to nature, and of what in fact makes a place “wild.” This book highlights today’s intricate and ambiguous intersections of class, the environment, and economic development through the lens of an iconic California landscape.

Explore! Big Sur Country

Explore! Big Sur Country PDF Author: Barry Parr
Publisher: Falcon Guides
ISBN: 9780762735686
Category : Big Sur (Calif.)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Author Barry Parr describes the region along spectacular Highway One, from the parks, lore, history, and scenic riches, giving strong emphasis to the many day-hikes both from the coast and interior roads, and lesser emphasis on selected backpacking routes mainly in the Ventana Wilderness.

Big Sur

Big Sur PDF Author: Jack Kerouac
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101548819
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
A poignant masterpiece of wrenching personal expression from the acclaimed author of On the Road “In many ways, particularly in the lyrical immediacy that is his distinctive glory, this is Kerouac’s best book . . . certainly he has never displayed more ‘gentle sweetness.’”—San Francisco Chronicle Jack Kerouac’s alter ego Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur “reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion.”

Where the Road Begins

Where the Road Begins PDF Author: Peter Gray Scott
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780615451473
Category : Big Sur (Calif.)
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Book Description
Non-fiction American history of the homesteading of Big Sur, California.

A Natural History of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary

A Natural History of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary PDF Author: Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
The first complete natural history of one of the most popular diving and tourist meccas in this country.

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch PDF Author: Henry Miller
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811219704
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Book Description
In his great triptych "The Millennium," Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise. In his great triptych “The Millennium,” Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise. Whence Henry Miller’s title for this, one of his most appealing books; first published in 1957, it tells the story of Miller’s life on the Big Sur, a section of the California coast where he lived for fifteen years. Big Sur is the portrait of a place—one of the most colorful in the United States—and of the extraordinary people Miller knew there: writers (and writers who did not write), mystics seeking truth in meditation (and the not-so-saintly looking for sex-cults or celebrity), sophisticated children and adult innocents; geniuses, cranks and the unclassifiable, like Conrad Moricand, the “Devil in Paradise” who is one of Miller’s greatest character studies. Henry Miller writes with a buoyancy and brimming energy that are infectious. He has a fine touch for comedy. But this is also a serious book—the testament of a free spirit who has broken through the restraints and clichés of modern life to find within himself his own kind of paradise.