Standing before the Lone Cypress

Pebble Seaside, Calif. — You’ve seen the Lone Cypress. It stands alongside famously scenic 17-Mile Drive, raked by wind, swaddled in fog, clinging to its wave-lashed granite pedestal like God’s personal commercial for rugged individualism.

It could be 250 years outdated. It may be probably the most photographed tree in North America. It sits alongside one of many world’s most lovely (and costly) golf programs. It’s a advertising instrument, a registered trademark, a Western icon.

David Potigian, proprietor of Gallery Sur in Carmel, defined it to me this fashion: This tree is to the Monterey Peninsula what the pyramids are to Egypt, what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris. No marvel its keepers are hoping it’s going to final 100 extra years.

However let’s face it: That is one spindly outdated conifer, small for its species, scarred by a long-ago arson. For greater than 65 years, half-hidden metal cables have held the tree in place.

Should you pay the $9.75 per automotive to cruise 17-Mile Drive (which is non-public property, a part of the 5,300-acre Pebble Seaside resort), you will note the Lone Cypress and behold the spectacular collision of land, sea, golf and wealth that’s Pebble Seaside. However you gained’t get inside 40 toes of the tree. Likelihood is you’ll be joined by just a few different vacationers. Possibly a tour bus too.

That is the problem of a traditional postcard vacation spot. Like many vacationers, I’m drawn to those locations — the Lone Cypress, Yosemite’s Half Dome and Monument Valley, for example. But once I arrive, I don’t desire a warmed-over expertise. I desire a jolt of discovery.

Even in the event you haven’t learn Don DeLillo’s novel “White Noise,” you could have felt just like the character in it who gazes upon vacationers as they gaze upon the most-photographed barn in America. “Nobody sees the barn,” he says. “When you’ve seen the indicators in regards to the barn, it turns into unattainable to see the barn.”

I wish to see that barn — or, on this case, that lonely tree. I’ve seen loads of Lone Cypress photos, however by no means stood earlier than the real article and stared. Once you lastly get to such a spot, you wish to spot one thing that may draw you nearer or remodel your perspective. You wish to perceive what’s modified and what hasn’t since that first postcard photographer rolled up in his Ford, or possibly his Packard. And also you wish to know what waits past the sting of the postcard view.

The Lone Cypress is oft-photographed, however is there nonetheless one thing to be seen in it?

These tales are my stab at that. That is the beginning of a collection during which photographer Mark Boster and I revisit iconic Western locations.

So, Cupressus macrocarpa, the Monterey Cypress. When you attain Pebble Seaside, about 325 miles north of Los Angeles, you enter 17-Mile Drive, pay the sales space attendant, then head previous well-tended fairways, sprawling estates and coastal open house to cease No. 16.

In your manner, remind your self that as a species the Monterey Cypress naturally happens no place on Earth however round Pebble Seaside and Level Lobos. Each considered one of these natives is a rarity.

At No. 16, you discover about two dozen parking areas lining the two-lane highway. Above the surf, rocks and foliage, there’s a picket statement deck, and close by there’s a fenced non-public house that has stood inside 200 toes of the tree for about half a century. (It was a lady on this house, Frances Larkey, who noticed the flames and known as authorities when an unknown arsonist set the tree afire in 1984.) And on the market on the rock, there’s the Lone Cypress.

Some vacationers shrug and keep two minutes. Some make out and keep 20.

Above and beneath sea degree, it’s a wealthy shoreline. Elsewhere alongside 17-Mile Drive, you may stroll the seaside at Level Joe, prowl the tree skeletons at Pescadero Level and take within the huge panorama at Cypress Level (which closes April 1-June 1 for seal-pupping season).

Should you want to do your coastal rambling on foot with out golf programs and personal estates, it’s just a few miles south to Level Lobos State Pure Reserve ($10 a automotive). Should you ask Kim Weston, grandson of famed photographer Edward Weston and a longtime Carmel native, Level Lobos beats Pebble Seaside hands-down as a spot to prowl with a digicam.

So did I see the tree anew? Not precisely. We visited it morning, midday and evening, watched vacationers ebb and stream, chartered a ship to see it from the ocean. Greater than ever, I’ve a mushy spot for that singular determine on the rock. However the perfect minute of the journey — the journey second that felt recent, enduring and uniquely rooted on this nook of the world — occurred simply up the highway.

I’d rented a motorcycle. The solar was low, and I used to be meandering north from the Lone Cypress towards Level Joe. Forward, 17-Mile Drive, practically empty, gently rose, fell and curved.

I started to sense a deepening connection, started to really feel as if I’d lastly wedged myself between the panorama and every little thing else. A cold breeze. Squawks and barks from Hen Rock. Orange sky. I’ve no image to point out of that glad, unobstructed second, however I’ve the second all the identical.

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Timeline: The lifetime of the Lone Cypress

A have a look at key dates within the historical past of Pebble Seaside’s well-known tree alongside 17-Mile Drive.

Earlier than 1813, consultants suppose: A Monterey cypress seedling takes root on a piece of granite on the Monterey Peninsula.

1880: Railroad magnates Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington and Mark Hopkins wish to lure extra People west. By way of their Pacific Enchancment Co., they open the Resort del Monte, a grand resort on the dramatic shoreline close to Monterey. The next June, they open a path for horse-drawn carriages and name it 17-Mile Drive.

1889: Correspondent R. Fitch, writing within the Monterey Cypress newspaper, reviews that “a solitary tree has sunk its roots within the crevices of the wave-washed rock, and defies the battle of the weather that rage about it through the storms of winter.”

1897: The nine-hole Del Monte Golf Course, first venue of its sort on the peninsula, opens and shortly expands to 18 holes.

1901: The Pacific Enchancment Co. begins charging 25 cents for passage on 17-Mile Drive. Highlights embody the Ostrich Tree (downed by a storm in 1916) and the Witch Tree (downed within the Sixties). The Lone Cypress is seen at Halfway Level.

1919: Samuel F.B. Morse (a distant relative of the Morse Code inventor of the identical title) buys the resort, which now features a resort, a lodge and two golf programs. On inventory certificates, Morse contains a picture of the Lone Cypress, which turns into an organization trademark via the many years.

1941: Images present the cypress’ rock has been shored up by stonemasonry.

1948: The U.S. Navy, which leased the Resort del Monte throughout World Struggle II, buys the resort. (It’s now the Naval Postgraduate College.) Images present the Lone Cypress is now supported by metal cables, however vacationers can stroll as much as the tree and picnic.

1969: The tree is fenced off to guard its roots. Morse dies at 83, having constructed the resort right into a promised land for golfers. Its possession will change a number of occasions through the subsequent 30 years, and the Del Monte imprint will fade as new administration emphasizes the Pebble Seaside title.

1999: A bunch, together with Peter Ueberroth and Clint Eastwood, buys Pebble Seaside Co. from Japanese house owners.

2012: An upstart cypress begins creeping out of the Lone Cypress’ rock base, elevating hopes of renewal for the landmark. Then comes a storm. The upstart is obliterated; the Lone Cypress stays.

2013: Pebble Seaside Co. now operates three motels, 4 golf programs, a spa, a seaside and tennis membership, an equestrian heart and 17-Mile Drive. Neal Hotelling, the corporate’s director of licensing and unofficial historian, notes {that a} Monterey cypress in excellent situations can final 500 years. As for the Lone Cypress: “We actually suspect it’s going to proceed to dwell whereas. I might hope at the very least one other 100 years.” The corporate has no plan for when the tree dies, Hotelling mentioned, besides that “we expect the trademark will dwell on even when the tree doesn’t.”

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