John Vonderlin: Artist & Collector of the Coastside’s Natural Wonders
Having been a surfer in my youth in Hawaii, I believe it is a feeling any surfer can describe, probably with words like bitchen or stoked or is gnarly the right term these days?. But, unlike surfing, sit-on-top kayaking has a very friendly learning curve. Almost as friendly as snowshoe hiking. Within minutes, without any instruction I was having a ball. Twenty years later I’m on my fifth kayak.
While I’ve never been attacked by a Great White, as a member of a kayak fishermen club was at Bean Hollow recently, I have had a belligerent sea lion sneak up on me and my kayak partner and leap out of the water with an aggressive roar right next to us. The icy cold water, fog-shrouded rocky shores, submerged reefs, sneaker waves and the knowledge that there isn’t anyone that could save you in many places I go is more relevant to me. Still I read with fascination the exchange of emails of the kayak fishermen involved in this attack at norcalkayakanglers.com.
I like the “quote” by one of them, “I knew it was going to happen eventually, but never so soon and not to someone I know.” Life is full of surprises. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
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-”Neptune’s Vomitorium,” ….”Don’t Eat Us Beach”…..the “Sunken Cathedral”…. and much more below…..Enjoy!
Hi June,
Were you aware there would seem to be pictures of the remnants of “Gordon’s Chute” in the family album of Sybil Easterday?
Were you aware there is a small, virtually unknown cove, that thanks to an interaction of the long shore current,a paleocreek, and the offshore quartz ridge that fed Pebble Beach, is a “Neptune’s Vomitorium,” that produces epidodically and temporarily the best rock collecting spot on the coast?
Interested or not, let me thank you now for the enjoyment your books, columns etc. have given me. I hope you keep up the good work. John Vonderlin
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Hello John,
Thank you for your most fascinating email! And for your kind comments.
Do you have Sybil’s family album? The only truly “personal” thing of Sybil’s I’ve seen was a hand -colored, charming dinner menu made for friends dining at Tunitas. Must have been early in her career, don’t you think?
“Neptune’s Vomitorium” is the perfect name for what you describe. Are you a rock collector?
June
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Hi June,
Sybil Easterday’s family album is in the San Mateo Historical Society Archives. The two pictures that seem to show the remnants of Gordon’s Chute are very small shots of the beach and ocean. Because of the size I took the remnants to be the masts of a passing ship in the first photo. It was only when I saw the second photo, which shows the remnants in a different state of decay, that I realized what I was looking at.
I was researching “Don’t Eat Us Beach” at the time because I am fascinated by this hard- to-get-to beach. From its history of Indians, Portola, Gordon’s Chute, end of the line rail trestle, and Easterday, to its present day use as a practice beach for Jim Denevan, the Sand Man, it has always been an odd place.
Although I am a natural wonder collector, yes, I do collect rocks. But, of types you are probably not familiar with. Rocks that very few others collect, with names like synthetikites, mimetoliths, naturools, pareidolics, notrocks and concretions. The last type, concretions, or the ” Rodney Dangerfields ” of rocks, are fairly common along this coast. At the south end of Tunitas Beach are the finest coastside group of concretions of which I am aware. .
The prize of the group is a prolongate coalesced concretion (dumbbell-shaped) that molluscs have swiss-cheesed. I’ll attach photos of the concretions.
I’ll also attach a photo of the types of rocks that occur at Neptune’s Vomitorium. Incidentally this spot is in front of private land with the pebbles occurring in that gray and disputed area surrounding the “mean high tide line.”
My hope is the pebbles I have gathered can some day be a part of a display at Pebble Beach.
But, the colorful pebbles spit out on Invisible Beach by Neptune’s Vomitorium are of little interest to me as compared to the non-buoyant marine debris that is also ejected.
For three years I have been regularly collecting, washing, photographing, sorting, and storing the tens of thousands of objects deposited on the beach at this site. I have used many thousands of them to create hundreds of pieces of art, typically combining them with the natural wonders in my collection.
Others like, “The World’s Largest Fishing Line Ball,” (3K and growing) Squidy Litter, (16 feet long with each arm or tentacle composed of some of the common types of marine debris) Lord Litterall, ( a 7 foot tall, one-eyed, one horned assemblage) The Sock Monster (the 7 foot answer to where all the missing socks go) or Lady Litterall (a 7 foot beauty with hundreds of colotrful rope segments as hair) are whimsical demonstrations of the quantity of debris out there and where it is coming from.
My largest exhibit, of several hundred pieces, is entitled, “The Silent Procession From the Sunken Cathedral to Neptune’s Vomitorium.” This combines a wide range of natural wonders with the remnants of golf balls hit into the ocean from the 18th hole of the Old Course at the Ritz Carlton.
The Sunken Cathedral is the ruin being eroded from the cliffs below the Ritz. After being plunked into the surf by the thousand, they travel unseen down the coast over a period of years with some of their twisted remnants being coughed up by Neptune’s Vomitorium. I’ll include a picture of the typical golfball remnant collected at Invisible Beach.
If you are not familiar with the legend of the original Sunken Cathedral, or how this ruin at the Ritz came to be named the same, and why I used it as a metaphor for the subsurface travels of the golfballs I’d be glad to tell you in another email. John Vonderlin
All photos courtesy John Vonderlin
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Thank you, John! What a treasure you’ve sent me, in words & pictures.
I’m not aware of the “Don’t Eat Us Beach.” Where did it get that name?
May I post all of this glorious info that you have emailed me?
[Now that you mention Sybil's family album, I saw it many decades ago. She has always been, for me, a fascinating character. A 19th century type who could never have been happy in the 20th.]
I love the term, “Rodney Dangerfields” of rocks. I understand and appreciate your love of “natural wonders” –and, honestly, I’m glad most people don’t “see” what you see.
Vonderlin is a German name?
Best,
June
And, yes, please tell me about the “Sunken Cathedral.”
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Hi June,
I became familiar with the usage of “Don’t Eat Us Beach,” and “Don’t Eat Us Creek,” for Tunitas Beach and Creek, while researching shark attacks, as I began to kayak the nearby coast.
If you websearch, “Don’t Eat Us Creek Tunitas,” the Surfline.com, page dealing with the August 1987 attack that probably generated the monikers should come up.
“The Sunken Cathedral,” the ruins eroded out of the oceanside cliff below the Ritz Carlton, was dubbed that by Lennie Roberts. She hates it and dreams of its future destruction by man or time. Claude DeBussy’s dirge-like composition from 1910, entitled “The Engulfed Cathedral,” about the legend of the grand city of “Ys” on the Breton coast, that was engulfed by the ocean in the 5th century was her reference. (I could send you the 6 Meg MP3 file of it if you’d like)
On the other hand I think of the ruins as a powerfully symbolic historical resource that should be allowed to decay. I’ve been enamored of it since while in the period I was hunting down the source of the numerous golf ball remnants I was finding at Invisible Beach, I looked up from staring at the reef south of the Ritz Carlton and was startled by the ruins eroded from the cliff. My first thoughts were of the climactic scene in “Planet of the Apes,” when Charlton Heston, recognizing the ruins of the Statue of Liberty, realizes the truth of what has happened.
In talking to tourists who question me when they see me photographing it on my various return trips, it’s obvious I’m not the only one. If you websearch “Sunken Cathedral Lennie Roberts” her article discussing and picturing this oddity, should come up. Basically it involved G.E., the then owners’, need to secure their development rights by beginning construction before the 1973 California Coastal was signed into law. Perhaps, you are familiar with the recent illegal riprap suits against the Ritz, which is just the most recent skirmish related to what some view as a festering thorn in the paw.
As to the legend, which apparently has some truth to it, I’ll end this email with an excerpt from Wikipedia about “The Sunken Cathedral” in the grand city of “Ys.”
While I am protective of the location of Invisible Beach and Neptune’s Vomitorium, for nearby owner’s privacy, the scientific integrity of my marine debris project, and resource preservation reasons, I don’t think anything in my emails endanger those aspects, as the names are of my creation and my descriptions vague. Enjoy. John Vonderlin (German, though most Dutch I’ve met travelling insist it’s probably Dutch. Flexible boundaries through the centuries?)
Here’s a poem by Stephanie Pui-mun from the online Wyvern Library that captures a bit of the feelings you might get when you see the ruins on a fog-shrouded morning if you’re familiar with the legend.
.
Angels have fallen for pride,
And grand Ys–it fell for no less;
Yet when the moon’s coaxed out the tide
Ghost bells still remember the mass.
The sailors and fishers have seen the gilt
Shadows
Stretching proud arches upon the glass sea,
And heard the faint echoes of eons dead
Fellows
Old towers will rise from the swells–
Water glossed, seaweed laced, barnacle
Jemed
The gift of the Ocean with each heavy knell
Of the bells, to Dahut’s wat’ry den.
Angels have fallen for pride,
And Grand Ys–it fell for no less
[edit] The Legend
According to the legend, Ys was built below sea level, protected from inundation by a dike. The only keys of the gate in the dam were held by Gradlon, but Satan made Dahut steal them and give them to him. He then opened the gate and Ys was flooded. In some versions of the story, Satan was sent by God to punish the city, whose inhabitants were becoming decadent. Other versions of the story tell that Dahut stole the keys either at her lover’s request or in order to open the gates of the city to let her lover in. The only survivor was the King Gradlon, who was advised to abandon his daughter and Saint Winwaloe by Saint Winwaloe himself. Everyone who lived in the city died, while the souls of the dead children were then swallowed by the ocean as a punishment. According to the legend, one can still hear the bells of Ys, warning of a storm. Gradlon then founded Quimper and on his death, a statue representing him on horseback looking in the direction of Ys was erected on the Saint Corentin Cathedral and still stands there. Bretons said that Ys was the most wonderful city in the world, and that Lutèce was renamed Paris after Ys was destroyed, because “Par-Is” in Breton means “Similar to Ys”[citation needed].
This deluge legend differs from others because the location of Ys is well defined: the statue of Gradlon looks at it, most of the localities mentioned exist, several Roman roads actually lead into the sea (and are meant to lead to Ys), and this myth could in fact depict the engulfment of a real city during the 5th century[citation needed]. This history is also sometimes viewed as the victory of Christianity (Gradlon was converted by Saint Winwaloe) over druidism (Dahut and most inhabitants of Ys were worshippers of Celtic gods). However, a Breton folktale asserts that Gradlon met, spoke with and consoled the last Druid in Brittany, and oversaw his pagan burial, before building a chapel in his sacred grove[citation needed].
[edit] Later use of the legend
The legend of Ys was confined to the folk of Brittany until 1839, when T. Hersart de la Villemarqué published a collection of popular songs collected from oral tradition, the Barzaz Breizh. The collection achieved a wide distribution and brought Breton folk culture into European awareness. One of the oldest of the collected songs was this tale. The medieval poet Marie de France also wrote poetry and stories based around the Ys legend.
Alain Deschamps and Claude Auclair are the authors of a comic based on the legend of Ys, called Bran Ruz (red crow).
Four years after E. V. Luminais‘ painting scored a success at the Salon of 1884, on May 7, 1888, Édouard Lalo’s opera Le roi d’Ys, based on this legend, premiered in Paris.
In Claude Debussy’s first book of Preludes (published 1910), the evocative La Cathédrale engloutie recalls the drowned cathedral in the city of Ys, with the muffled and watery sonority of its spectral bells.
Author Robert W. Chambers set the short story “The Demoiselle d’Ys” (from his fantasy collection The King in Yellow, 1895) in medieval/contemporary Brittany.
Poul Anderson and his wife Karen wrote a tetralogy of novels, The King of Ys, set in Ys, in the 1980s. Prior to that series, fantasy writer A. Merritt in his novel Creep, Shadow! drew from the Ys legend.
Jack Vance sited Ys as one of the cities in the kingdom of South Ulfland in his Lyonesse Trilogy.
Dutch-born writer Iman Wilkens claims, in his book Where Troy Once Stood, that the Trojan War and other events in Homer’s epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey took place in the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea; he claims the city of Ismarus, sacked by Odysseus‘ men after leaving Troy, was in fact Ys. Wilkens’ suggestions have not attracted the attention of mainstream scholars.
Breton harpist Alan Stivell recorded an instrumental track called “Ys” on his 1972 album Renaissance de la Harpe Celtique.
Harpist/folk-singer Joanna Newsom released an album in 2006 called Ys[1].
Progressive rock band Il Balletto di Bronzo also has a concept album called Ys.
The heavy metal band Bal-Sagoth has included Ys in many of its stories/songs.
A. S. Byatt’s novel Possession: A Romance, which won the Booker Prize in 1990, makes frequent reference to Breton myth and legend, including the story of Ys.
The Japanese video game company Falcom created a video game series also named Ys in 1987, and it has become very popular in both Japan and the United States.
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Hi June,
Here’s a few pics of The Silent Procession heading out to sea, our best one day’s haul of 222 golf balls, the 18th hole of the Old Course, (the source of a vast majority of the errant golf balls), and a beach shot of The Sunken Cathedral.
The legend says that sometimes at night on the fog-shrouded Breton coast, lines of hooded monks, carrying candles and chanting can be dimly seen and vaguely heard through the mist. The line of golf balls migrating seaward through a crack in the reef in the first picture was probably the origin of the theme of The Silent Procession.
If you websearch California Coastal Records Project they have many great pictures (#14328 for example) of this area which really helps in visualizing what is going on here.
It’s interesting that the number of remnants at Invisible Beach have decreased since we started our irregular, but thorough reef cleanings at low tide below the Ritz. Ironically, as I was developing my exhibit of golf ball remnant art I almost regretted that. But, then again if they all disappear I’ve got the market cornered. John Vonderlin
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Hi June,
I’d be glad to answer all your questions in subsequent emails, but would like to first relate something that got me excited over the last few days.
It started when I attended the Pescadero History Walk Around about two weeks ago. The new head of this group was an exuberant and knowledgeable speaker about Pescadero’s history. He even mentioned Pebble Beach’s part in local history, obviously drawing from your book [The Coburn Mystery]. In fact, his story was what initiated my finally contacting you.
Anyway, I had to leave, but my friend stayed and participated in the whole tour. She told me that the speaker had indicated that Portola’s expedition probably crossed at the ford near Pescadero.
Having researched this some time ago I was dubious. I had read the diary of Miguel Costanso, the engineer/cartographer of the expedition and felt his entries were too vague to be sure.
Loving mysteries, we made a couple of drives along the coast and into the foothills in the following week, trying to match his sketchy descriptions with the ground level reality without any surety. In a nice bit of serendipity the local paper had a story about the archaelogical dig going on at Ano Nuevo. Mark Hrkema was leading a dig at the Casa Grande, the large round meeting house of the Indian tribe that had hosted the expedition on October 23rd and 24th, 1769.
Thinking if we looked at this area’s topography and factored in the fact the tribe had supplied guides for the expedition to lead them north we might be able to divine the route. Though Mark had been circumspect in his description of the area, knowing its approximate location it was easy to view the dig from Whitehouse Creek Rd with the aid of binoculars. The Portapotties, visible from across the canyon at one point gave it away.
Driving home, speculating whether Mark would gives us a tour, we stopped at the Loma Mar store.
There we saw an aerial photo, shot eastward from slighly offshore, showing the Pescadero watershed in the foreground, S.F. Bay in the background. Hmm. That looks like a Google Earth shot only tilted. Oh yeah, I remember they added a tilt feature handy for virtual flyovers in the last year or so. I first used it for a Devil’s Slide flyover that had been publicized in the newspaper.
When I got home, I got on Google Earth, went to the Whitehouse Creek area near where the village was, adjusted the zoom, rotated, then tilted the image which gives you a very good topographical representation of surrounding land.
Given Costanso’s words, the fact the Indian guides would have steered the expedition along historic Indian trails where possible (they had sick men carried between mules), it was easy to see after climbing out of Whitehouse Creek Canyon, they would have followed the valley that Cloverdale Rd runs through and been dumped out right where the ford on Pescadero Creek was.
You can read “Miguel Costanso’s diary” online by websearching that phrase if you don’t have a copy. There are a handful of other diaries or fragmentos by other members of the expedition that I have only read excerpts from. When I’ve learned more I’ll return to this subject. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
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[Below, a letter John wrote to his granddaughter, Emily. It is called "Guadalupe's Story." ]
Here’s a story about something I found on Invisible Beach a few years ago. When I learned the full story about it, it became one of the early odd, head-scratching events that led me to devote so much time and energy to studying this very special spot. This is Guadalupe’s Story.
Chapter 1
Guadalupe’s parents loved their homeland. Although, it was only a small, barren, cactus sprinkled island, the sparkling, fertile sea that surrounded it, provided all they needed to survive, as it had for countless generations. Then things began to change. Perhaps, it was the growing population of their island or the ever more common appearance of large fishing boats nearby, but the bounty of the sea became more erratic, then less common, then more rare. At last, with hunger driving them, they left their ancestral home. Without permission or papers they headed north.
It was a perilous and arduous journey, with their path seemingly a gauntlet of those wishing them harm. Watching, listening, hiding , fleeing, they forged northward. Hugging the coast, foraging wherever possible in this strange, dangerous new world.
Guadalupe’s birth, when it came, was not one indicating future good luck. When her mother’s time arrived, it wasn’t into the protection of a heated Birth Center that Guadalupe entered this world, but rather on a lonely, rocky beach during a raging, cold January storm. The fierce gale whipped sheets of near freezing rain in Guadalupe’s face, choking her as she gasped for air. The crashing breakers exploding on the nearby shore, regularly shook the cold ground she quivered on. Her shock at this rude turn of events was only slightly lessened as her mother covered her with the warmth of her bulk and began to clean her..
Well that is all for now. Did you know Guadalupe was a Guadalupe Fur Seal,not an “Anchor Baby?” She was probably the first pup of her kind born in Northern California. Her species was considered extinct for decades, driven there by greedy fur-seeking bipedal predators. The Guadalupe Fur Seal’s rediscovery, protection, and subsequent recovery is a heartening environmental success story that is virtually unknown. This first offspring of a pioneering couple of her species and her subsequent death by starvation because of entanglement in a piece of fishing net is a powerful reminder that much more has to be done.
She is the poster child for my “Not in My Ocean” group. I owe her a great debt for helping me to discover the most amazing coastal spot on the West Coast. An apology from our species to hers for her needless death and a changing of our ways is in the wind, a wind that is blowing softly now, but gathering strength. I hope to add my hot air and help that happen. Not with scolding, regulations, and fines, but with awareness and enjoyment through amazement and entertainment. A. & E. through A. & E. so to speak. Enjoy. Grandpa John.
[Images below of the entangled seal, courtesy John Vonderlin]
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Hi June,
This is a little background info on the Guadalupe Fur Seal. After we reported the entangled pup, Ray Bandar picked it up, autopsied it, and identified it as a Guadalupe Fur Seal. Are you familiar with Ray, the bone man? [click here]He’s the kind of well-meaning, obsessive knowledge sponge I admire and seek to emulate. But my bone phase is long over and I’ve moved on to much stranger stuff. One of which will be my next email: Atlantean Super Science in San Mateo?
Enjoy. John Vonderlin
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Having been a surfer in my youth in Hawaii, I believe it is a feeling any surfer can describe, probably with words like bitchen or stoked or is gnarly the right term these days?. But, unlike surfing, sit-on-top kayaking has a very friendly learning curve. Almost as friendly as snowshoe hiking. Within minutes, without any instruction I was having a ball. Twenty years later I’m on my fifth kayak.
While I’ve never been attacked by a Great White, as a member of a kayak fishermen club was at Bean Hollow recently, I have had a belligerent sea lion sneak up on I and my kayak partner and leap out of the water with an aggressive roar right next to us. The icy cold water, fog-shrouded rocky shores, submerged reefs, sneaker waves and the knowledge that there isn’t anyone that could save you in many places I go is more relevant to me. Still I read with fascination the exchange of emails of the kayak fishermen involved in this attack at norcalkayakanglers.com.
I like the “quote” by one of them, “I knew it was going to happen eventually, but never so soon and not to someone I know.” Life is full of surprises. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
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Hi June,
I’ll attach a couple of files to this email that answer some of the biographical questions about how I ended up haunting every inch of the San Mateo Coast south of Half Moon Bay.
I’m happy to report that not long after I made my presentation as detailed in the BOLSA BEACH SHAME file to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors the dumpster was removed and a berm was built eliminating the camper’s parking, Then I’m told that over seven hundred pounds of nails were removed in the last two years by the Coastal Cleanup folks. I don’t know what part my words or pictures played in those decisions, but I doubt they hurt. I’ll attach a picture of a piece of artwork I made from broken glass and nails from this once tortured beach and included on the disc. Enjoy John
Here’s the photo…..
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Good Morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is John Vonderlin. I live in Santa Clara, but am very familiar with the San Mateo Coast, due to my love of kayaking, hiking, beach combing, marine debris collecting, and photography. My purpose this morning is to inform you of the actions and inactions of the applicant, the Peninsula Open Space Trust, that I have noted and documented for the last year on their Pigeon Point property.
While my observations and photographs are from a piece of land slightly north of the parcel being considered now, I feel they have relevance in guiding you in extracting promises concerning their future stewardship and the avoidance of the repetition of the negative effects they have had on nearby landowners and visitors.
I began this casual and sporadic process on Sept 17, 2004, when as a newcomer to this area, I eagerly joined in the Coastal Cleanup of Bolsa Point Beach, a few hundred yards north of the lighthouse. I was outraged by what I saw and wrote the letter that I have included in my informational packet. Subsequently, whenever I would pass by on one of my adventures, I would stop and photograph what was continuing to go on under the stewardship of P.O.S.T., at this spot. I have included a disc with about 30 pictures on it that illustrates the main problems I observed.
Those problems are:
1) A continually open, usually overflowing dumpster from which the actions of birds and other scavengers, along with strong winds, spread litter along the beach and into the ocean.
2) Hundreds of fire pits, some obvious, but many covered with a thin layer of sand, that contain tens of thousands of nails, numerous broken bottles, sharp pieces of metal, misc. incinerated trash (some potentially toxic) and charcoal remnants from industrial pallets, pressure treated wood, and synthetic woods.
3)Public health problems like hepatitis and zoonotic diseases are a potential danger due to the presence of “toilet paper roses� in every hidden area, the feces generally missing because local animals have consumed them.
4)The uncontrolled use of high powered, dangerous, illegal fireworks at the beach, introducing unknown toxics to this environment both through ignition and their remnants being left on the beach.
5)Uncontrolled camping and partying, particularly on weekends, involving all of the above problems, as well as the misbehaviors common to such gatherings. (I.e. public drunkenness, underage drinking, statutory rape, drug use, fighting, theft, and vandalism.)
In closing, I would ask you to put the $200 million dollar gorilla’s feet to the fire. Please force them to properly maintain the properties they acquire. Not only for the protection of the health and safety of the locals and tourists that visit this property, but because what they view there may be the most lasting memory of the San Mateo Coast they will carry home with them. Thank you for your time.
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Attention: Pat Showalter
Subject: Watershed Restoration
I would like to expose what I consider a serious obstacle to the improvement of the watershed in regards to providing a healthy environment for the returning fish. That is: There is no effective barrier to stop enormous amounts of floating debris from flowing over the spillway at Lexington Reservoir into Los Gatos Creek then into the Bay. This includes telephone poles soaked in carcinogenic creosote, lumber (some pressure treated with carcinogenic chemicals), other toxic flotsam, large amounts of plastic, (including bags, bottles, flare caps, etc.) tennis balls, fishing line, bottles and cans and so much more.
For over a year, ending in mid 2004, on over a hundred occasions, I hiked, kayaked, photographed, and picked up several tons of debris along every foot of the reservoir’s shoreline or its’ edge. For my own amusement I began to save the more unusual debris and construct art pieces demonstrating what I was collecting.
I abandoned my part project/part R&R efforts when two deputy sheriffs confronted me and told me what I was doing was illegal. I insisted it wasn’t and asked them to quote the regulation I was violating. They didn’t know and after identifying myself, explaining I did it as relief from my high stress role in providing support and dignity to my 84 year blind, disabled mother, the wife of a deceased Santa Clara County Bailiff/ Deputy Sheriff they backed off; told me to keep up the good work, and departed. So did I, intending on never returning. And I didn’t…until early this year when my brother told me he had noticed the reservoir was ready to overflow, something I had not seen in the three years since I returned to the Valley.
Curious, I went out there to check it out. I was shocked at what I found. There in plain sight of anyone driving along the road on top of the dam was an enormous amount of floating debris inside the boom intended to keep it from flowing over the spillway. I kayaked over to the spillway and photographed this mess that was poised to soon head down Los Gatos Creek.
I returned a few weeks later after heavy rains had caused the reservoir to overflow for some time, then stop. What I saw was shameful. I took more photos, then wrote a Letter to the Editor (unpublished) and to Paul Rogers, the MN’s environmental writer(uninterested). Discouraged I dropped the matter.
Recently, I saw the “Notice of Intent� in the MN and decided I should try one more time. I have numerous photos, several art pieces, and a large amount of “on the ground(water)� information I would be willing to share if it could be of value.
The two attached pictures are of a piece of floating debris I photographed before the overflow then recovered it after the overflow because it got stuck in the bushes. Apparently it conrinued to rust through in that period and released more expanding foam that took the shape shown. The association that it reminded me of the climactic scene in “Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Love the Bomb” in which Slim Pickens rides the atomic bomb earthward, was made more powerful by the fact it missed its earthward plunge over the dam and into the Bay because of my intervention. I’ve meant to turn this into art, but feel that would be redundant as is often the case when competing with Mother Nature. If you are unfamiliar with the movie an Image websearch using “Slim PIckens Dr. Strangelove” brings up numerous files. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
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Hi June,
Here’s an art project I’m proud to have begun. It’s called 101 Tires. Basically, I hunt for tires in the most beautiful places on our coast, usually photograph them in situ, hopefully with a beautiful view behind or through them, then haul them away. I’m stuck at 45 right now because of time demands, but have a large stash on Tunitas Beach waiting for me to carry them up that killer hill.
I was a little miffed when somebody else got to two that have been clearly visible from Highway 1 in the Pescadero Marsh for over a year. I tried to get them but almost became stuck in the mud and put their addition to my project off too long. Some new friends I met at a Docent Walk at the Preserve tell me they think they know the people. I hope to involve them as an addendum to my story. Apparently they used boards and a big roll of something to keep from getting stuck. Hopefully they took photos. I’ll include a few photos of a few of my acquisitions . Enjoy John
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Hi June,
Here’s a couple of pictures of the Tunitas Creek Trestle foundation at various times. Apparently, there is some kind of Graffitti Guerilla group that is going around and painting over garish graffitti in remote places. I like that they not only paint over it, but use pleasant colors that fade into the background. In subsequent trips I’ve noticed more graffitti appearing, then being painted over even better then before. If this strange little war keeps up there might be an embryonic piece of art forming. But, then again I see art everywhere. John
P.S. Here’s a better photo of some of the concretions at the South of Tunitas Beach. I’m having trouble finding the photos I’d like to send because I have three harddrives with 50K photos in hundreds of files, all with poor organization. I’m an archival photographer rather then an artistic photographer. I let a team of Japanese software writers determine everything about the shot except the subject, closeness and angle. Once I went digital I’ve met few things I didn’t want to photograph. Enjoy John
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Hi June,
Well, if I’m to be an artist I suppose I should show somebody besides my family and friends some of my art. Here are pictures of some of the larger pieces I mentioned. All are works in progress, as are many of my larger pieces. There’s Lady LitterAll, Lord LitterAll, Squidy Litter attacking the World’s Largest Fishing Line Ball, and the Sock Monster. The last is a shot of socks from the Sock Monster Lair. Imagine finding 46 socks like this within 100 feet of each other on one day at Neptune’s Vomitorium. Events like that are what have driven me to investigate, document and exploit the “treasures” from this odd place. Perhaps, what I’ve learned and created will be of help to somebody. Enjoy John
P.S. I’ve always been interested in Anthropology. But, being a generalized knowledge sponge, nicknamed, only slightly perjoratively, Dr. Science, and good-naturedly chided for his Johnologues (Asked a question I’m more like to give my friends a large amount of info from many angles rather then an answer) I’ve always considered all the sciences a buffet to feast on. On the other hand, until recently, most forms of art have been a stranger to me. It’s never too late.
From the “Sock Monster: 
Hi June,
Between my own experience, Internet searches and a few email inquiries I was able to identify four of the characters in the attached photo of “My Posse.” Stumped I sent the photo to my granddaughter Emily, and she was able to identify six more. They, unfortunately, all suffer from amnesia due to the perilous voyage they endured before being spit up by Neptune’s Vomitorium, and are unable to help me return them to their homes. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
(Photo: John’s Posse, click to enlarge) 
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Hi June,
Tarball Cove, my name for a small cove slightly north of Pebble Beach, is a good example of how amazing our coast is if you look carefully. I named it that because in my first experience with a tar ball event it was a reliable source. I collected more then a hundred tar balls from there and other spots during that first event. There have been three major landings of these little devils in the last three years along our coast. All fueled by natural oil seeps in the Monterey Submarine Canyon, according to scientific analysis. While I originally picked them up to clean the beach, as my collection grew and I researched the history of tar ball strandings and their use by Native Americans, I thought they told a good story that an art piece should show.
So I came up with the “Beach 2100″ piece. It is simply a no longer needed oil drip pan, filled with the several hundred tar balls, all melted together by a hot day, in which I embedded hundreds of the smaller children-related toy remnants gathered from Neptune’s Vomitorium. There are various themes, messages, assemblages, etc. contained in the chaos. The overall theme is implicit in the title and the choice of children related objects. Will this be their world in a hundred years? Will a day at the beach look like this in 2100?
Tar ball Cove is also my most reliable source of Battering Rams. A Battering Ram is a creosote soaked remnant of a telephone pole. Because of the toxic, carcinogenic preservative it is nearly immortal, smashing against the reef and its already wave-beseiged life millions of times before it is finally reduced to still odiferous splinters. Each strike can crush the unwary or immobile, and leaves a toxic legacy on the reef like a Bingo dauber on your game sheet.
I’ll include a picture of the project I’m using them in. It doesn’t have a name yet, but it so far combines the Battering Rams with more then a thousand feet of the tediously untangled ropes, mostly from crab pots, I have collected from various beaches . I’m sure you’ll recognize that it imitates the ubiquitous decoration found outside of many seafood restaurants. Whether it gets the required pelican sitting atop it remains to be seen.
Lastly, at least in this email, Tar ball Cove is presided over by an unusual natural formation that imitates the seals that frequently rest on the nearby rocks. I have better pictures of this somewhere, but have never captured it as clearly as my eyes do. Not being a knowledgeable photographer I don’t know how to get a good shot when shooting into the sun. I’d read the thick as a book manual for my camera, but I heard somewhere that’s illegal for men to do. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
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Hi June,
Cannonball Beach is the name I’ve given to a spot on the San Mateo Coast that runs a close second to Invisible Beach as far as being the most amazing spot on the San Mateo Coast. From its waterfall that cascades directly into the surf more frequently then McWay Falls in Julia Pfeiffer State Park in Big Sur, to its incredibe smorgasbord of surf-rounded, fossiliferous and Swiss-cheesed rocks, to its cliff-clinging concretions of various shapes, to its rare and ephemeral display of great numbers of cannonballs, grapefruit size and better spherical concretions, loosened from the cliffs above and smoothed by the surf, it is quite unique.
Because it borders private land I’ve selected my photos not to give away its location. It is protected by its isolation, as it requires a long hike along the beach after a climb down a perilous slope of large boulders. My hope is the state will acquire this property if it ever comes up for sale. I’ve attached a few photos of the things I mentioned. I’ll return to discussing this place and nearby areas in the future to expand on some of its other wonders. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
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Hi June,
It occurred to me that I should reveal the location of Tar Ball Cove. I don’t think there is any fear of somebody getting this year’s crop of telephone poles before me and perhaps somebody could take a better photo of the “seal rock,” then I have so far. I just discovered I inadvertently gave the wrong general location anyway. It is just north of Bean Hollow Beach not Pebble Beach. It is clearly visible on Photo #6281 of the California Coastal Records Project. It’s about a third of a way from the left. There is a strange six-sided home across Highway 1, whose driveway points right at it. The large 15 Meg file you can access by clicking on the medium size photo shows it clearly.
Here’s a few more photos of some of the things somebody might see there. I’ve included Telephone Pole Graveyard, an old tarball I got to too late to collect, tafoni, a Leprechaun Ring and an example of the glass you can find along the rocky coast just to the north, a once popular partying spot based on the quantity and variety collectible there. Enjoy John Vonderlin
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Hi June,
Rock Stacking is one of my favorite types of ephemeral beach art. Just as with Sand Castle artists and Sand Raking artists there are a number of professionals who have made a career of this odd hobby, several in this area in fact.
Jim Needham, out of Carmel, has a website dedicated to his craft and business at RockStacker.com. While I’ve seen his “Gravity Garden” many times on my way back and forth to the Big Sur, it was a review of his work with the title of “An Intimate Exploration of Rock Stacking as a Sacred Form Evoking the Numinous Experience” by Dr. Peggy Stringer of the Pacifica Graduate Institute, that sent me laughing all the way to my dictionary. The URL is rockstacker.com/press/rsrjjn.html (Try a “Rock Stacking Sacred” websearch if that won’t work)
In San Francisco there is Bill Dan, who does lots of his works at Crissy Field or the Palace of Fine Arts. He an extensive site chronicling his and others’ work at his website, “Rock On! Rock On!” or at “BillDan.blogspot.com”
Stuart Finch, known as “The Rock Man,” out of Santa Cruz, used to do many of his works on West Cliff Drive. You can read about him at: http://metroactive.com/papers/cruz/03.21.01/goldies-fir (Ooops. Won’t work. Try a websearch of “Rock stacking Santa Cruz” That should bring it up to the top of the page.
Another good site about professional rock stackers with many pictures can be found at www.teamsandtastic/rockstacking/rockbalancing.htm You can reach them with a “Professional rock stacking” websearch. It should be the first entry.
I tried this art in combination with my “Garden of Pain” display, but had to give it up because birds were toppling some of my efforts and I was afraid I’d crush the neighbor’s cats. I’ll include a picture of that when it existed. The “Garden of Pain” was part of my security efforts to make my Mother’s home safe from intruders. While evilly-spiked agaves worked well beneath most windows, the front window was too shady under the giant Chinese Elm tree that dominates the front yard.
Lastly, I’ll include a picture of my favorite “wild” rockstack I found along our coast. It was the simple brilliance of using small pebbles between the layers to introduce more stability, something I’d never seen before, that captivated my interest. True pros probably view this as a training-wheels copout, but what do they know?
I have a humor-seeking essay about the prehistoric roots of this skill, a further development of the critical-to-the-survival-of-our-species skills of rock piling and rock throwing, if you are interested. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
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Hi June,
My father was almost a lifer in the Navy. It was his profession that controlled my and my five brothers’ and sisters’ lives when we were young.. Three years at each station and then it was time to move on. The military was careful then not to let your roots sink too deep lest you think unpatriotic, unuseful thoughts, like not reupping when re-enlistment time came. Each stationing might be subdivided into temporary Naval housing, permanent base housing and purchase of an offbase house, each with its own school and group of new friends, many of those caught on the same carousel as we were.
With six kids, the pathetic salary paid service men then, and long carrier deployments when Mom was King, beachcombing was the entertainment of necessity, later of choice. . Key West, Cheasapeake Bay, Naragansett Bay, San Diego, and Hawaii all contributed to my childhood beach experiences. Since then I’ve added an impressive list of others. I truly am a Son of the Beach. Bred, born, and baptized.
Given that, it’s no surprise that as I began to haunt the San Mateo beaches I began to collect floats. Lots of floats. All kinds of floats. Tunitas Beach, while not gifted with the attributes that promotes aggregation of flotsam, was isolated enough, and infrequently visited enough in the winter that the good stuff that was stranded was mine for the taking. It is the only place in San Mateo County, from which I and my beach partner have ever recovered unbroken Japanese glass floats. In my case a six inch roller float, in hers, a three inch globe.
Well, it was one cold winter day on a float quest that we made our way down the steep, muddy hill that was the only way we knew down to the beach at that time. As we descended the last part of the slope, I spied two people on the beach to the north and cursed. Competitors! Damn them! Somebody is trying to steal our treasures.
Trying to make the best of a bad situation we headed south along the beach and picked up a few ho hum floats then turned north. It was then I noticed a man with a rake climbing the slope we had come down. My heart lightened. He wasn’t festooned with or dragging a train of connected floats as I often am. He was something else.
As we proceeded further north along the wide beach we began to find floats. Floats that wouldn’t have been there if the people we had seen were float collectors. Yee Haw. We also found bare footprints in the sand. Dang. I think we have a fruit loop here! Never battle the elements or your enemies with your pants down or your shoes off my Pappy used to say. Certainly not voluntarily.
After fording Tunitas Creek, I got my first view of Jim Denevan’s work. Just scrawlings in the sand it seemed to me then. I remember the strange synchronicity of finding a garden leaf rake that had washed down Tunitas Creek and was embedded in its bank that day more then any thoughts about his efforts that I was seeing. Intermission.
P.S. There’s Stonehenge and Woodhenge, the famous paleolithic sites in England, but what is Hedgehenge? If you Google Earth “Pigeon Point Lighthouse” and move East you’ll see this amazing design on the ground that seems to be a complex hedge. Sort of a Reverse Crop Circle. Do you know anything about it? It’s at 37 degrees 11 minutes 11.72 seconds North and 122 degrees 22 minutes and 17.84 seconds West. I just emailed a Google picture of this oddity to you. I hope your system is compatible. I’ll throw in a picture of our best float day. Over 150 floats, many of them children of the gyre. But that’s a different story. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
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Hi June,
Here’s a few more interesting aspects of the southern beach entrance to Tunitas Beach, which I call the Southern Straits. A word of caution to anyone wanting to explore this area. It is only passable at a good low tide, the rocks are quite slippery because of this, and help in case of an accident is unlikely in a timely manner.
A good start before exploring would be to look at the large file for Picture # 200506445 at the California Coastal Records Project website. If you look carefully you can just barely see the concretions on Mussel Rock that I previously sent pictures of.
The narrow cleft between Mussel Rock and the cliff is usually full of water, subject to wave surge even at low tide and difficult to clamber out of in a hurry, so please be careful. For the really daring who wish to continue south when the tide is in you can use the rope up the cliff pictured in the first photo. I recommend against it.
Looking further to the right on the CCRP picture you see a large sea cave with a area of white rock just above its entrance. (also Photo #2) That cave goes all the way through the promontory and comes out on the right side onto the wide sandy beach. I know of no other sea cave that does anything like that. Once again my lack of photographic skills keep me from capturing the scene properly but I’ll include the best I’ve got.
The third photo is looking back at the northern entrance about halfway through. The fourth is of the southern entrance.
One other small note of caution, the wide beach that heads south of here to San Gregorio leads you to the nation’s first official nude beach. The north section of that nude beach is generally regarded as a gay beach with activities sometimes visible that might offend you. So be forewarned.
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Hi June,
When I began to seriously hunt for and collect what I considered to be Natural Wonders, I was curious if there were others out there doing the same. Research was difficult, as I didn’t even know if such oddities even had names. I eventually discovered that while there are very few Americans that shared my enthusiasms, there were thousand year old traditions in the Far East of people who enjoyed, collected, or utilized as art some of my types of collections.
Qen Bao Shi, Chinese for “Root Hug Rock” is one example. In China there has been a long tradition of collecting roots of trees that have engulfed rocks, then carving the mass into certain traditional themes, like wizards or dragons. While what I was collecting were natural, untouched by man, I found the marriage of the organic and inorganic, surviving even long after death, a wonderful metaphor for many things and couldn’t resist them.
Because a root mass engulfing and binding rock into it is not that rare a phenomena I created my own set of criteria to determine collectibility. The wooden part must be attractive in its own right. The stone should be firmly set in the wood and have a good presentation. If it should also be attractive or unusual, that much the better.
I suspect a picture might be worth a thousand words in this case, so I’ll attach some pictures. The first picture is a Chinese Qen Bao Shi I photographed in a small shop on Venice Beach a few years ago. The second photo is a piece of art I bought for $30 in a secondhand shop in Placerville, fifteen years before I began collecting natural Qen Bao Shi. Though there was an American name and a number as if part of a series on the back, I have never been able to find out any information about the artist. It made a nice Christmas gift as I continued purging bought art from my collection.
The third is one I collected from Lexington Reservoir. It has obvious pareidolic qualities.. The fourth which has two captured stones also has pareidolic qualities. Kokopelli, the fertility symbol common to many Southwest Native American tribes immediately jumped to mind when I found it. The fifth is from my Insane Cane collection.
A websearch for “Qen Bao” should bring up the Luckywonders.com website page dealing with these wonders to the top of the page. In fairly good English they explain the philosophy and aspects of attractiveness of these oddities below. An Image search of Qen Bao brings up some good pictures too. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
Qen Bao Shi and Tree Roots
Qen - root, Bao - hold/hug, Shi - stone
The tree root art is known to have been around for thousands of years in China. The art has been practiced much like the way of bonsai and gongshi/suiseki - the idea of bringing the natural specimens inside your home and to contemplate them into every imagination, or to mimic the nature. The tree roots are used as art collection, home display, furniture such as tree root tables or chairs/stools, practically anything. They can also be displayed along with gongshi/suiseki, or bonsai, or even as contemporary arts. Larger specimens can be displayed outdoor in the gardens or patios.
There are no particular kinds of trees that carry tree roots. They can be any types of trees that grow in the mountains and rocky areas. So far the best sources of such tree roots are known to be in the southwestern and southern parts of China. All of the tree roots displayed on our web site are from the Guangxi province.
Most of the time, when found, the trees are already dead or have been cut down for different purposes. Sometimes, because of the geological movement or natural happenstance, part of the tree roots may appear from the ground. Since the tree root art has been around for thousands of years, in the right areas, with the right people who understand tree root art, the potential tree roots for art can be discovered.
Stone is of hard material. Tree roots in their living time are of soft material. Even though the roots are soft and fragile, they can slowly break through the stones after a long period of time. Little by little over the years, the roots penetrate through or grow around the rocks. As the roots grow larger, they shape around the rocks or even break through the rocks similarly to the way some of the roots penetrate through the cracks of the rocks. And finally the tree roots “get hold on” (embrace or hug) to the rocks, thus the name of qen bao shi (roots holding rocks).
The idea of soft-and-hard (use soft to conquer hard), similarly to yin and yang, fascinates people. In addition, it takes a long period of time to form such an amazing piece, making qen bao shi is more expensive than just fantastic stones or just tree roots (without stones).
When tree roots with stones are found, the first thing is to try to find out the best design for the roots, such as trying to make the figure of the roots for carving or images, or trying to figure out how to display the whole thing. Some big specimens are good for tables or display stands.
The stones found with tree roots are usually not polished. The appearance of the stones is to be left as natural as possible. A few cuts on the stones here and there are perhaps necessary for the digging out from the ground and trimming purpose. Most of the time, the cuts of the stones are not to follow the designs, but more likely the designs are to be worked out with the conditions of both stones and roots as found. That’s why it takes longer, more labor, and more cost in the process.
The stones are usually from regular mountain rocks, no particular material or minerals. However, people may find different types of stones in different locations. Mostly the stones found with roots are just a mixture between limestone, sandstone, and minerals.
The tree roots that don’t “hug” any stones are usually from cotton trees or cinnamon trees. Cotton tree roots look like mushrooms, with wider forms and curly edges. Cinnamon tree roots look like wire holding and going through each other. They also come from camphor trees.
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Hi June,
Here’s some pictures of Jim Denevan’s work at Tunitas Beach. I’ve only talked to him once and seen him twice. He apparently likes to use the north end of Tunitas as a canvas because it has a huge flat area of sand that is erased by the incoming tide. Some of my favorite pictures of his work involve only partial tidal erasures. He only seems to work barefoot, based on footprints and observation, and only in the winter when people like him and I have the beach pretty much to ourselves. He’s had a PBS documentary made about him that would seem to help cement the “End of the Line” aura of Tunitas. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
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Hi June,
As I mentioned previously, one of the most common of Natural Wonders on the San Mateo Coast, are the rock features called Tafoni. When I first started researching what was causing the unusual formations, I was amazed to find out they were not restricted to the immediate coast, but could be found in the desert or on mountaintops. While the science of their creation in different environments, in different rock types, is still a bit mysterious, here’s the text from a sign that attempts to explain Tafoni.
“The fascinating structures that cover the sandstone are called tafoni, which is Italian for cavern. Geologists first used the word tafoni to describe sandstone formations found on the island of Corsica, and the term “alveolar weathering” to describe the process that created these formations. This complex weathering process that creates the caves, columns and sandy surfaces that are smooth in some areas and covered with labyrinths of knobs and ridges in others, takes place over thousands of years. This is how it works: During the rainy season, water soaks deep into the sandstone and mixes with the calcium that is there. As the water evaporates from the stone during the dry summer season, some of the dissolved calcium is drawn out to the surface of the stone where it forms a hard outer layer called the duricrust. This evaporation process causes any calcium remaining in the interior of the stone to be distributed unevenly so that there are some soft, low-calcium areas and some hard, high-calcium areas. If the outer surface of the sandstone is cracked or broken, the softer parts of the interior erode away more quickly than the harder areas, forming caves, caverns and tafoni formations.”
I’ll attach some miscellaneous photos from my extensive collection. The first photo is from Pebble Beach. There are a number of better photos online of this type as the combination of Tafoni and the colorful pebbles is irresistible to photographers. The second is a variation on that same theme, but on a larger scale. I assumed the pictured rock was somebody’s beach art at first until I looked closely. It is just an example of Nature, abhorring a vacuum or finding a hole and filling it. The third photo is a cannonball concretion with associated tafoni. The last are examples of the myriad of possibilities that tafoni displays along our coast. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
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Hi June,
When Jehovah Witnesses or Mormons or most recently Catholics from the nearby church my father was a steadfast member of come to my door, I love to break out the two pieces of art I’ll attach pictures of, while I explain my humanistic / Atheistic Jesusite beliefs and ask them tough questions about their’s.
The first is a Mexican mask from a large collection I used to have that I repainted then combined with two pieces of driftwood. The smallpox coated tongue, blue-eyed devil with his gold sniffing nose and his emerging second devil face are all supposed to evoke the conquistadors true motivation as they spread the Gospel by Fire and Sword.
The second piece is a combination of two very odd pieces of driftwood covered with small rounded pieces of driftwood glued together to form crosses with my non-buoyant marine debris cross collection attached. The white painted piece with its loop on one end and cross on the other, required only cutting its top and arms slightly. The attached with lemon tree thorns Jesus is a twig with a gall caused by insects that left the small holes when they left their swollen home. The nail was from Bolsa Beach.
Strangely, the proseletyzers never return. But, I will tomorrow with the story of Invisible Beach’s Roach Motel Embayment, and its amazing driftwood. Enjoy. John Vonderlin
(Photos to come…sorry, I’m behind on posting the photos….)
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I’m heading out to the coast for an adventure today (Hedgehenge?), but will continue Jim Denevan’s story soon. He is part of a group of artists that I think of as Ephemeral Artists. Create it. Enjoy it. Then it’s gone. Christo and his Running Fence in Sonoma (which a number of my friends worked on) was the first one I became familiar with. Andy Goldsworthy often does ephemeral pieces. Rock Stackers are a sub group. So are Sand Castle artists. Even Sky Writers are. I’m sure there are others, but as I said I am a stranger to most forms of art and try not to alter my path as studying their’s would.
If you watch TV you might have seen one of Jim’s works in a Land Rover commercial. I believe it was shot at Point Reyes and is very similar to his lead piece on his website. I only talked with him once, as given his “canvas” at Tunitas he was obviously not seeking company. I only bothered him because I wanted to know, since a tire seemed to be a hub of one of his practice works, if he would mind me removing the tires from Tunitas. Enjioy. John
P.S. I’ll attach a picture of one of Goldsworthy’s ephemeral ice pieces.
(Photo at left, Ano Nuevo, at right, Andy Goldsworthy’s ice piece)
