Summery Judgment

Workshops there include exploring biofeedback, Kabalistic healing, yoga, meditation, chanting, drum-circling, dreaming, holistic sexuality, chakra integration, aromatherapy and beyond.

If you must scoff at something, I would choose "Golf in the Kingdom: An Exploration of the Deeper Game" revealing the game's "many opportunities to enhance the journey of self-discovery," according to the Esalen catalog, which also informs, "The expenses of attending Esalen, including travel, are deductible for federal income tax purposes as an educational expense if incurred to maintain or improve professional work skills." If, like me, one of your better work skills is sitting in a hot tub, there you go.

The massages there are about as good as they get, both spiritual and muy sensual. They take place either in a yurt or in the great outdoors by the mineral baths. Leslie was worried about the baths, as one is typically naked there, and that isn't where Leslie is typically naked. "That's really nothing to worry about," Helena had assured her. "Besides, there isn't going to be anybody up there you know."

"Hey, Jim. Jim Washburn?" Well, hey, if it wasn't Lance from the Busstop Hurricanes standing by the tubs, blowing Helen's theory all to hell. Lance lives there now or something.

A thing about mineral baths that many of the great unwashed don't know is that the chief mineral typically is sulfur, so it basically smells like you're settling into a warm egg salad sandwich. People are naked there, but naked people smelling like egg salad is not the turn-on you might think it would be.

We spent two days in Big Sur, hiking, hanging out by the river, eating, visiting the Henry Miller Library. There aren't many places that still hold the wonder for me that they did when I was a kid, but Big Sur does, and you can camp there hardly for squat. (We paid multisquat to stay at the lodge, which is also nice.)

We wound things up in San Francisco. Somehow, in that great restaurant town, we managed to have two lousy dinners in a row, one at a Japanese place where you pick your sushi off shoe-sized wooden boats that glide by. Sail on, little sushi, you know not what tomorrow may bring.