Going Back To Esalen

Last year, at Spring Break, we went on a road trip down and back up California's central coast. The first three days and two nights were spent in Santa Barbara staying with family, dining everywhere from a most elegant restaurant filled with childhood memories to the cafeteria of a retirement community, running for miles along the sandy beaches and watching movies on the hide-a-bed until 2 a.m., until we left one rainy morning and drove to Solvang to eat ourselves sick on jelly doughnuts and buy sandals and bracelets and postcards and dreamcatchers, all kinds of vacation accessories, before piling back into the car for the crowning jewel of the long weekend: two days and a night at Esalen in Big Sur.

There I fell in love with hula hooping, spending what felt like hours standing on a broad tree stump overlooking the crashing waves of the Terrific Pacific while putting all those Middle Eastern and belly dancing classes to good use and earning a huge bruise on my right hip to show for my efforts. We wandered over the bridge to the Art Barn and I don't even need to close my eyes to feel the smooth planks of the studio's floor, still warm from the heat of the day, beneath my bare feet as I ran in and out, back and forth from the tables filled with every thickness of brush and hue of paint to the makeshift easel I'd created for myself on a split log laid parallel to the edge of the cliff, mere meters away from its plunging edge and the roar of the sea below. Our explorations took us everywhere from the farm to the nest, the dining hall to the pools and back again finally to our room at the end of the evening, full of fresh air and good food and all the stars we could see in the dark night sky.

Unfortunately, from that point on the rest of our time there was a profound disaster and in no way worth the hundreds of dollars each person paid for the experience of spending thirty supposedly blissful hours in coastal paradise fighting about absolutely nothing, so let us leave the story about my first trip to Esalen at that and not speak of it again.

Last week, though, as I was rethinking for what feels now like the thousandth time how I want to use my time this spring I began to think not about what I should do...or what others might do...or what it would be cool or important or unique or valiant or ever-memorable to do. Instead, I ventured into completely uncharted territory in my mind and started thinking about what I *want* to do. And, one of the things I want to do is go back to Esalen.

For six days in early April I will be learning to cook from Charlie Cascio, Esalen's kitchen manager from 1998 to 2004, in the very kitchen that serves 750 meals a day to students, teachers, and hula hoopers alike. I am taking my sleeping bag and will camp on the floor of the Big House, sharing a classroom by day, bedroom by night with other "seminarians" also there to learn in this or other workshops taking place the same week, and I will shower at the baths overlooking the sea. The course's required reading is The Esalen Cookbook, nine chapters of delicious recipes originally created to serve 250 people at a time but now rewritten on a much smaller scale for preparation in a normal-sized kitchen. I can already feel the sun-warmed floorboards of the Art Barn underneath my bare feet, worn smooth by the steps of years worth of artists, including myself.

What else might I want to do this spring?