Big Sur
Big Sur
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Anyone been to or live in Big Sur, CA area?
I'm writing a short story for a fiction-writing class. One of the pivotal scenes takes place at a (fictional) artists' community at Big Sur in the late 1960s. The main character has taken magic mushrooms and falls off a sand embankment to the beach below (I need that Alice in Wonderland "through the rabbit hole" falling imagery/allusion). I've never been to Big Sur and have never seen the beaches there. Are there any coastal areas with sand embankments and stretches of walkable beach below or is it mostly rocky cliffs with steep, beachless drops to the ocean? I've read Kerouac's "Big Sur" and he doesn't mention beach. Any info. on this matter would help. Also, what are names of some beaches with the geography I am looking for in my story. I'm all about verisimilitude. thnx...
It depends how far beyond the realm of possibility you want to take your readers. There's no "sand embankment" down whch you could fall and still survive. For example, take a look at the "beach" below the Bixby Creek Bridge (ake Rainbow Bridge).
http://www.caviews.com/bixbyph.htm
This is pretty typical of the area. In fact, it's one of the shorter drops down to the beach (where there is any). Most places go straight into the water. Perhaps a rewrite is necessary, unless you are going to do an Alice In Wonderland sort of dream sequence where all these things happen to him, and the book ends with him breaking his neck at the bottom of the fall, with all the previous chapters just a dream.
Otherwise, I just don't see it happening within the realm of possibility. Every year people fall off those cliffs and die. However, in '03, a Berkely student fell 200 feet down the cliffs and actually survived.
Good luck