Pescadero Memories

Please visit Remembering Russell Towle, click here

Story & Photos by John Vonderlin

Email John ([email protected])

There has been an explosion of Beach Art on the path to Invisible Beach that I’ve found interesting. I’ll attach some to this. My favorite is the “Mt. Rushless,” Two young girls did the cliff etching self-portraits one day and somebody else added the President’s the next week. Enjoy life as if it was the precious fragile gift that it is. Enjoy,  John.

June: I was so shocked at the hard reality of Russell Towle’s sudden death by horrific car accident. Knowing a little of Ano Nuevo in the 1970s, having visited there often as a college student before the state took over,  it was thrilling to learn that Russell had actually lived there. Built a rustic cabin in a remote place few dared to set foot on because of the harsh weather. That he knew all these fascinating characters, some of them artists, who lived on the beach, a story that grew stronger with the appearance of the scientists from UC Santa Cruz, there to study the huge, clumsy mammals, the sea elephants, that look like they came from another time.

Russell Towle’s brief, bold stay at Ano Nuevo overlapped that of novelist Ken Kesey and his Prankster friends, whose headquarters was a rustic cabin in the redwoods of La Honda. The flip side of Ano Nuevo, which, in comparison, could be the moon. But the remoteness of the beach at that time was irresistible. Not too far from La Honda and what a fun place to make a movie, which Kesey & the Pranksters did. Russell remembered the “movie” and believed his cabin was in it, something he looked forward to seeing again because those years were magical for him. As they were for many of us, all around the same age.

The South Coast beaches were an aphrodisiac, so raw, so very real. And nobody was around. We were the lucky ones.

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Words by John Vonderlin

Email John ([email protected])

Based on my viewings  of Russell’s various webpages (blogs, photos, videos, geometry) I think his flurry of emails were in character but more intense then anything online. I attribute that to his finding a receptive, interesting and responsive audience at your blogsite. We really wanted to hear what he had to say and that made him enthusiastic to share. Recapturing an important, colorful time in his life obviously gave him great pleasure. I’d like to think the excitement of locating his film, and all the threads that were going to open up were echoing through his mind in his last days. Perhaps, he was planning another book about his adventures of that time, as I would have suggested to him shortly.
Part of my sadness at his untimely end was I’ll never get to meet him, or absorb any of his extensive knowledge of the rugged wilderness that he regularly hiked and wrote about in his blog. I think we might have become good friends when my circumstances allowed.
I had so many questions about things he mentioned in his early rapidfire emails that I was waiting to get to. I had wanted to methodically move through them, covering the Ano Nuevo area thoroughly before moving on. Now they’re lost.
I had thought he would be a good person to interview Harvey Mowry, and was going to suggest so, based on his email to you about visiting the old ranches and talking up oldtimers just for the enjoyment of it. The world has lost a good man.
I have this feeling that a Monty Parker style memorial may sprout near where Russell’s driftwood cabin was in the dunes of “The Forbidden Zone.” If I ever should happen to be hiking there I’m sure I’ll take some pictures.

Many Pescaderans questioned Loren Coburn’s extreme actions, expressly the locking of the gate to beloved Pebble Beach and all of its special, shiny stones.  Did he have the legal right to do that?

The local’s next move was to petition the county’s board of supervisors, to ask them to condemn a road on Coburn’s land that led to the beach. This road had been freely used for five years and could not be closed without special approval from the board.

One Pescaderan explained that  the road in question  was “supposed to be on neutral or government ground. The result will interest every man, woman and child within 20 miles of Pescadero, in fact, it will interest citizens in many states throughout the country.”

As in any tug-of-war case, there has to be sides. The Pescaderans said that the beach and its pebbles were located below the high water mark, said to be government tide land.

Loren Coburn had tired of people crossing his land to get to the beach. He objected, he said, to people staking out 40 horses at a time to pick the lucious strawberries that grew there. He viewed them as trespassers, complaining that the berry pickers came in “mobs of 60 or 70.”

He also complained that he had rented the land to dairy farmers James Wilson and John Montevaldo but they refused to renew their lease because of all the horse and foot traffic. But when asked to confirm the story, Wilson and Montevaldo said they did not renew the lease because the price was much too high.

It was all so confusing because Loren Coburn had once said that visitors who didn’t trample the berries were welcome to visit Pebble Beach. All they had to do was ask for permission, and pay an entrance fee. The last part didn’t sit well with the Pescaderans.

The County newspaper explained: “…Mr Coburn is perfectly willing that anybody who will be careful not to injure any of his property should go to the beach and all they have to do is to ask for the key and they will get it. How does that statement correspond with the following facts: Mr. Coburn was called upon by Mr. Alex Moore, the pioneer settler of Pescadero, and Supervisor Henry B. Adair, to define his position. He states emphatically that strangers coming here would be carried to the beach [from his stable, of course, to avoid the question of toll] for 75 cents per head. Mr. Moore asked, ‘What in regard to our women and children?’ to which Mr. Coburn replied that ‘they had no business there…'”

The Gordon-McShane nuptials are scheduled for next weekend at romantic–but still funky– Princeton-by-the-Sea.

Email John Vonderlin ([email protected])

SUNDAY, AUGUST 26, 2007

There is also Bigfoot, which has been heard and photographed there
and seen by people in my research group, the International Cryptozoological Society

There is no fee, and it is bring yer own food and camping gear.
Located near Kit Carson, on route 88,CA between Stockton and Tahoe.
You can park 1/2 mile from site, or take a 4×4 in. Easy.
Your kids may get Bigfoot in their throwaway camera… it does happen.

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Sadly, Mr. Jon-Erik Beckjord passed away in June 2008.