Robinson Jeffers' "The Coast-Road"

At a time when the collapse of the highway can feel like disruption, it's good to remember that for many on the coast the real and permanent rupture came when the highway was built in the first place.

"Bridge in Rocky Creek Canyon" by Horace Lyons — in "Jeffers Country: The Seed Plots of Robinson Jeffers' Poetry."

The Coast-Road

A horseman high-alone as an eagle on the spur of the mountain over Mirmas Canyon draws rein, looks down

At the bridge-builders, men, trucks, the power-shovels, the teeming end of the new coast-road at the mountain’s base.   

He sees the loops of the road go northward, headland beyond headland, into gray mist over Fraser’s Point,

He shakes his fist and makes the gesture of wringing a chicken’s neck, scowls and rides higher.

                        

                                              I too

Believe that the life of men who ride horses, herders of cattle on the mountain pasture, plowers of remote

Rock-narrowed farms in poverty and freedom, is a good life. At the far end of those loops of road

Is what will come and destroy it, a rich and vulgar and bewildered civilization dying at the core,

A world that is feverishly preparing new wars, peculiarly vicious ones, and heavier tyrannies, a strangely

Missionary world, road-builder, wind-rider, educator, printer and picture-maker and broad-caster

So eager, like an old drunken whore, pathetically eager to impose the seduction of her fled charms

On all that through ignorance or isolation might have escaped them. I hope the weathered horseman up yonder

Will die before he knows what this eager world will do to his children. More tough-minded men

Can repulse an old whore, or cynically accept her drunken kindnesses for what they are worth,

But the innocent and credulous are soon corrupted.

                                                                              

                                                                       Where is our consolation? Beautiful beyond belief

The heights glimmer in the sliding cloud, the great bronze gorge-cut sides of the mountain tower up invincibly,   

Not the least hurt by this ribbon of road carved on their sea-foot.

Comments

[Paul Hamilton]

Interesting that Melville, in 'Moby-Dick' says it is nature that "paints like a harlot", concealing a "charnel house within". For Jeffers, it is a "bewildered civilization" that is "an old drunken whore" . . . I find myself feeling sorry for old prostitutes! They are the figure for everything bad about nature and civilization!

[Betsy MacGowan]

We spent the weekend working on the Carrizo Trail, as I understand, the original route from the coast to King City. Have heard that coastal farmers would drive animals to King City for sale. Amazing to think of making the trip to town several times a year rather than weekly. When you see the trail, all rutted and grooved, it is evident that more than foot traffic created all the ruts. Except for a few fires that have passed though, sometimes killing everything, and some minor reroutes, probably not that much has changed on this trail.

[Chris]

Hi Paul,

I forget...how long and how deeply have you been involved with "Moby Dick"? I've only read it once — as a kid. But just recently I was listening to a discussion of it on "Entitled Opinions" (a podcast I recommend in general) — and it made me want to plunge into the book again.

http://french-italian.stanford.edu/opinions/

Hope all's well. Will you be coming to California any time in the foreseeable future? I'm really sorry that we missed each other last time.

Chris

[Chris]

Hi Betsy,

The homesteaders in the Lucia / Big Creek area certainly did drive pigs over the Gamboa-Carrizo trail. Tony Fontes told JP Harrington in 1932 that "old Gamboa" used to sleep the first night at French Camp, then let the pigs hang out in Trail Springs most of the second day, before taking them up to spend the second night at "Dry Camp" (which was on the descending ridge just west of the Gamboa/North Coast trail juncture. The third night they'd spend at Carrizo Springs.

I've been thinking about just this alot lately — how different a homestead economy was from a "highway" economy. Maybe we'll be led, or forced, back in that direction soon...

Thanks for all the trail work you do, Betsy. I haven't been up on the Carrizo in months. I'm really looking forward to getting back.

Gassho,
Chris