Travel and Fire Safety
People who visit Esalen Institute may encounter two specific problems that affect their experience of the institute.
The most common problem is driving conditions. Highway 1, the principal gateway for visitors traveling to Esalen Institute, is an audacious and problematic engineering accomplishment. The road traverses the edge of cliffs overhanging the ocean. Often it is closed by landslides. Especially during periods of stormy weather, visitors are cautioned to check the status of the Highway 1 before departure.
A much less common problem is the risk of fire. Esalen is surrounded by large tracts of state forests and federal wilderness areas. For this reason, human habitations in Big Sur are periodically threatened by fire. The "Rat Creek" fire, in 1985, damaged some of Esalen's facilities. The "Basin Complex" fire, in 2008, threatened Esalen, but never came close enough to damage the grounds. However, there was a fire in October 2011 that destroyed housing at Esalen’s South Coast Center.
The Esalen community has learned to live with the physical challenges of life in Big Sur, although visitors who are used to different lifestyles may find these problems disconcerting.
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Famous quotes containing the words travel, fire and/or safety:
“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The high sentiments always win in the end, the leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)