Читать книгу Hiking & Backpacking Big Sur. Your complete guide to the trails of Big Sur, Ventana Wilderness, and Silver Peak Wilderness онлайн

50 страница из 112

“Pepe looked up to the top of the next dry withered ridge. He saw a dark form against the sky, a man’s figure standing on top of a rock, and he glanced away quickly not to appear curious. When a moment later he looked up again, the figure was gone.”

In 1937, the poet Robinson Jeffers mentioned them in his poem “Such Counsels You Gave to Me” as “forms that look human … but certainly are not human.” If Jeffers or Steinbeck ever actually saw one of the Dark Watchers is unknown, but the local legend has been around since long before they wrote about it. Longtime Big Sur resident Rosalind Sharpe Wall claims to have seen the Dark Watchers near Bixby Bridge. If you happen to come across a Dark Watcher, the prevailing wisdom warns against looking at them.

The Ventana

The Ventana Wilderness is named for a unique notch called “The Window” on a granite ridge between Ventana Double Cone and Peak. According to local legend, this notch was once a natural stone arch that created a natural “window,” which is supposedly what inspired the Spanish explorers gazing up toward the peaks to call it Ventana. The Ventana, or “The Slot” as local rock climbers call it, is the 200-foot-deep gap in the ridge. Geologists have yet to find rubble of a collapsed arch to support the legend, but nonetheless there are many arches and small complete “windows” in rock formations in the Santa Lucias. You can view the notch by looking west from Ventana Double Cone or along Coast Ridge Road with views north and looking northeast from Post Ranch Inn.