It was the highest house on a winding road high above the Big Sur coastline, a simple place with drop-dead views and a spot in local history. Three decades ago, a few neighbors met there to organize an effort to keep Big Sur small and arty and largely undeveloped.
Now, the hand-built redwood structure is little more than rubble, a victim of the stubborn and unpredictable blazes battering Big Sur.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, July 02, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 53 words Type of Material: Correction
Big Sur fire: A caption with a photo on Tuesday's front page described the Basin Complex fire as burning through Palo Colorado Canyon. Although flames had entered the top of the canyon, they had not traveled far down it, and the area shown did not involve the community of homes several miles away.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, July 08, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 49 words Type of Material: Correction
Big Sur fire: A map with an article in Monday's Section A about the Basin Complex fire, as well as maps of the fire in other recent editions, showed Big Sur's Nepenthe Restaurant on the east side of Highway 1. It is on the west side of the highway.
"All my life I knew it might burn -- and it finally did," said Heidi Hopkins, who lived there until last week, when it was swept away by flame. "But when you live in a place like that, you have to take the consequences."
Hopkins, the daughter of Big Sur Land Trust co-founder Nancy Hopkins, is one of dozens of residents who in the last 10 days have lost a home to the lightning-sparked fires that span the state from Nevada to the Pacific Ocean.
Nearly 400,000 acres have been charred and 30 homes lost. Big Sur has more than its share, with two blazes blackening 100,000 acres and claiming at least 16 homes along the famous, rugged, 70-mile coastal strip. On Monday, residents awoke to a welcome wet fog. A northwest wind joined in to push the Basin Complex fire back onto itself, a good sign for the owners of more than 1,200 houses that fire officials fear still lie in its path.
But this has been a blaze more unpredictable than most, yo-yoing first one direction and then the opposite as hapless locals have watched or fled the peril and firefighters have struggled to protect some of the coast's more irreplaceable properties.
The Hopkins home was lost. So was the historic Stone House, a cottage of rock and wood perched on a grassy knoll on the steep coastal mountains rising east from Highway 1. The Henry Miller Memorial Library, home to art and books and artifacts from the famed "Tropic of Cancer" author, survived when firefighters beat back flames in the hills just across the coast highway.
Smoke from the fires has billowed inland, into the San Joaquin Valley.
Meanwhile, the New Age vacation mecca of Big Sur has been a virtual ghost town. The main highway has been shut down south of Nepenthe, the landmark coast-side restaurant. The Esalen retreat has closed its doors through at least Sunday, maybe longer if the fires persist.
The Ventana and Post Ranch inns reopened, but in the seaside hamlet of Big Sur -- still draped in smoke -- most small shops haven't bothered.
