The Four Winds Council: Co-Stewards of the Big Sur Wilderness

On Sunday, March 5, 2023, Esalen Institute, the New Camaldoli Hermitage, the Tassajara Zen Center, and the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County convened for a two-day gathering as the Four Winds Council. This was their first meeting in four years — an emotional assembly as they united in their mission to protect the Big Sur wilderness.

“Mostly, it's a fellowship of the spirit,” says Esalen President and Four Winds representative Gordon Wheeler. “We take it as a sacred stewardship. That's the one of the terms we like to use. We all take our shared wilderness as a sacred responsibility.” 

At each Four Winds assembly, representatives share updates on their respective institutions and spiritual practices aligned with their belief systems to center, ground, and reconnect. “It was our first meeting since the pandemic,” adds Gordon. “So that was emotional and important for all of us, and we did some sampling of each other's practices.”

The Four Winds Council is a consortium of four spiritually grounded institutes located within the Ventana Wilderness and Los Padres Forest, which began in the 1990s to share knowledge and at the urging of Mother Nature’s ongoing realities. Esalen faculty member and founding representative Steven Harper shared a desire to explore common practices, understandings, philosophies, and differences. “I’ve led nature-based programs for 44 years. It also came out of my relationship with the Hermitage, the community, and one or two monks, which goes back to a similar time,” says Harper, who received permission from Esalen’s then-president George Leonard to bring together the different institutions, with Esalen covering meals and offering some housing.

“We all share a stake in the health of the Santa Lucia Mountain and Pacific Ocean ecosystems in which we all live, and that it is a worthwhile venture to learn of our differences and similarities,” explains Harper. He also credits a quote that regularly appeared on the front page of the Esalen course catalog as his inspiration: “Contact is the appreciation of differences…” — Fritz Perls “...and the recognition of similarities.” — Dick Price.” 

“That's our basic fundamental purpose, getting together,” says Gordon. “Most of the time, that means we update each other on what we're doing. We give a report on the state of the wilderness issues — the particular challenges we're facing — some are unique to each institute and mission.”

During the very first Four Winds meeting, Harper met with Reb Anderson (head abbot of Zen Center), Teah Strozer (director of Tassajara), Robert Hale (Jungian scholar, priest, monk and previous Prior of the Hermitage along with fellow Hermitage former prior, monk, and scholar, Bruno Barnhart), Brother David Steidl-Rast (Benedictine monk and author), and Tom “Little Bear” Nason (Chairman and chief, Esselen Tribe of Monterey County). They primarily worked within the four spiritual traditions underlying the work of each center in turn: Soto Zen, Catholic monastic tradition, Esselen Tribe/Coastal native tradition, and the integral human potential tradition of Esalen Institute. Esalen, with Harper as its first representative, held the role of the convener of the dialogue. (“Not holding one single view,” says Harper, in keeping with the Esalen ethos of “no one captures the flag.”) Together, the group found a peak above 4,500 feet in Santa Lucia that they named “Four Winds Peak.” It was at this time that Tom Little Bear Nason, Tribal Chair of the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County, was invited to co-lead his first Esalen workshop.

All four organizations are regularly challenged by California’s changing climate and its effects, including  fires, storms, floods, coastal erosion, and inevitable closures. Dealing with the extreme ecological conditions this stretch of Mother Nature can aggressively present is a major concern of the council. 

“Nearly every year, we are fighting fires,” says Wheeler. “We try to prevent fires, but we are learning that much of our fire-fighting is counterproductive. By fighting every small fire, we trap ourselves in an unnatural cycle of decades-long build up of undergrowth, which only makes the eventual fires much worse. We are learning from native traditions that clearing out the undergrowth — through controlled burns and other means — we may achieve a healthier forest with less fire in the long run.”

“This is just one example of what modern forest science is learning from native traditions. The indigenous peoples of our area, once dismissed as ‘pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers,’ in fact were farming the forest and the game herd in sustainable ways.”

When it comes to other threats, political lobbying can be the most effective solution. “There was a mania for building dams from the 1930s to the 1960s,” says Gordon. “Some of them served a good purpose, but many were found to be harmful to the riverbed, to the flow of water. They didn't live up to their promise. Nowadays, the decision is more likely to be to remove a dam than to build one. A good example right here in our own wilderness is the Los Padres Dam on the Carmel River. Originally intended to supply water to Carmel and Monterey, the dam soon silted up, posing an earthquake threat and blocking the spawning season of steelhead and other fish. When the possibility of removing the dam came up in 2015, the members of the Four Winds Council, following the lead of the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County, we got behind that with our congressman and wrote a lot of letters and joined together to lend the spiritual cachet and the prestige of our four institutes to removing that dam.” The dam is now gone, and the migratory fish spawn is fast returning to the natural riverbed.

Throughout their tenure, the Four Winds has defended the land in many different ways and with different approaches. “It’s as much about the environmental science and business operation of this shared land as it is the spiritual significance of the land,” says Director of Community Alliances Douglas Drummond. “With landslides and fires, there's lots of erosion. There are lots of sacred spaces that are disturbed, so there's a bit of listening on the inside and listening on the outside to determine the best ways to move forward and heal this sacred land.”

Although the council had not met officially since 2019, representatives from each institution came together to support the Land Acknowledgement ceremony and sage planting that took place on November 13, 2022, at Esalen Institute to formally recognize the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County as the original co-stewards of the land.

“When we have important events like that, it's very meaningful to us,” says Gordon. “We had all four representatives in attendance and that was a great sign of support. We also came together like that in 2011 when we broke ground for the new Lodge and for the meeting spaces above and the kitchen facilities and the bookstore. The whole building doubled its square footage. We didn't want to do groundbreaking without a blessing from the Tribe as the ancient stewards of this land, as well as the witnessing presence of the other two. We are four sets of watchful eyes on the environment.” 

Moving forward, the Four Winds Council plans to again meet quarterly, just as they did before the pandemic. Once they return to some semblance of normalcy, they will meet to support one another in their respective missions and continue their roles as guardians for one of the most awe-inspiring, transformative, spiritual lands on earth.

"We were all drawn to this area to create places of learning for the larger culture," says Gordon. "We also share similar interests in the land that sustains and connects us, the Los Padres Forest and the Ventana Wilderness…the wilderness is a responsibility for all of us. There's less and less of it left. And where it is, it's very precious, and it's a precious experience to get out in it. It's a great gift to be out in the wilderness, and we're very cut off from it today and most of our lives."

"For us, this land is a sanctuary, a holy place where we may meet ourselves and nature in a simple yet profound way. For that reason, we are taking an active role as advocates for this wilderness and will work with appropriate agencies — public and private — to preserve its peace, solitude, and integrity."

The council was slated to meet again in April at the new Camaldoli Hermitage. Unfortunately, that meeting has been rescheduled due to a new landslide that has blocked road access. This reality illustrates the critical importance of stewarding and protecting where we can, our precious heritage of wilderness in Big Sur.