As flames approach Big Sur monastery, monks prepare to fight

Priests and students alike at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center have been doffing their traditional black robes, hefting picks and shovels, and forging 10-foot-wide fire breaks. Atop the roofs of the monastery's old retreat cabins and meditation hall, they've jury-rigged plastic pipe sprinkler systems.

Perhaps more serene than some, they were among a multitude of Northern Californians coping Friday with more than 1,200 blazes from the Nevada border to the Pacific.

The fires, triggered by fierce lightning storms last weekend, have charred more than 193,000 acres and destroyed at least 20 homes -- 16 of them just over the mountains along Big Sur's legendary 70-mile coastline.

The blazes prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday to ask that President Bush declare a state of emergency in the region. In a news conference, the governor suggested that fire-stricken counties consider banning Fourth of July fireworks.

In the Los Padres National Forest surrounding Tassajara, America's oldest monastery devoted to Buddhism, fires have devoured more than 80,000 acres in the last three weeks. Steph Wenderski, a 30-year-old native of Minnesota who has lived at the monastery for two years, admitted to occasional bouts of fear. But those periods, she said, invariably gave way to calm.

"You don't have much time to think about what could be coming," she said.

Local authorities asked that those staying behind in this spiritual center -- a series of rustic wood and stone buildings in a remote canyon 14 miles up a roller-coaster dirt road from the nearest pavement -- provide the names of their dentists for identification purposes.

So far, there have been no fatalities in the Northern California fires. And by midday Friday, the fire licking the edges of Big Sur's famous cliffs and new-age resorts had backed off a little.

Kirk Gafill, general manager of the cliffside restaurant Nepenthe, decided to reopen his eatery Friday evening. "We've been blessed with very little wind activity for the last week," said Gafill, fresh from a tour of redwoods burning across Highway 1 just 1,000 feet to the east. "If that were to turn around, all bets are off."