To Sur, With Love : A few days of solitude in the haunting beauty of Big Sur breeds thoughts of chucking it all for the simple life.

It is 10 o’clock in the morning. On a spider web outside my window, dew drops sparkle like pearls and moisture drips from the branches of a redwood tree as well as from the eaves of ancient cabins at Big Sur Inn.

In the distance I can hear the muted thunder of the ocean. The fog is slowly lifting and sunlight filters through mists after a night of zero visibility.

Throughout the night, Highway 1 was an unseen ribbon as fog filled the canyons, obscuring inns with inviting fireplaces, down comforters and shelves crowded with books.

One returns to Big Sur to recharge the soul, for no place along the entire California coast matches its solitude and beauty. Indeed, in a setting like none other on earth, peace prevails.

Gentle people--dropouts who provide good argument for trading job security for contentment--take refuge in the simple lifestyle of Big Sur, divorced from the chaos and violence of the cities, north and south along the California coast. One woman I know ventures here whenever time permits. Eventually she returns to the city and her job, but I suspect that secretly she desires to cast off that bondage for the freedom of this tranquil, rehabilitating hideaway.

In fact, few stay on permanently here. They try, but there is a scarcity of jobs. Openings are rare at Ventana, Big Sur Inn, Nepenthe and a scattering of other inns and cafes along the Big Sur coast that begins south of Carmel and curves and dips for approximately 80 miles to San Simeon, the home of Hearst Castle.

Highway 1 is a narrow, two-lane road that drops like a roller coaster to the ocean and moments later rises hundreds of feet above it. With cliffs that fall straight to rocky coves, it would be a plunge to eternity for the driver who loses control, as has been the case numerous times since convict labor completed the highway in 1937.

Over the years, conservation has been uppermost in the minds of environmentalists and the few residents of Big Sur. For the most part, they’ve succeeded in discouraging developers. It has been nearly 20 years since Ventana, with its handsome cedar buildings, began providing shelter for tourists, and only now is another resort on the rise, scheduled to open next spring in a stunning setting just across the road.

For the most part, though, Big Sur remains primitive and wild. The drive along the coast has been described as the most beautiful in the world, with miles of forested hillside overlooking coves that are mostly inaccessible. Below are treacherous beaches with threatening riptides and waves that can curl up to 30 feet and break with a force so powerful the land shudders as if wrenched by an earthquake.

Each year, 3 million motorists and campers travel Highway 1 through Big Sur. It is not a trip for the timid, particularly when shrouded in fog. I drove it the first time 24 years ago during a rainstorm at night, from San Simeon to Carmel, with my head out the driver’s window, watching the white line so as not to cross over to the ocean side with its perilous cliffs that feature drops of 1,000 feet.

On a sunny day, though, it is a drive of startling beauty. On one side the mountains; on the other the ocean. Cattle, waist-deep in grass and wildflowers, gaze as motorists pass. Occasionally deer cross the highway, emerging from the forest that is a haven for other wildlife. Pines and madrones and black oaks and redwoods surround meadows bright with poppies and other wildflowers. Hawks soar overhead, riding thermals and frequently diving to pastures below, where crows chatter and an occasional mountain lion steals through the grass. Hidden in the folds of the Santa Lucia mountain range are a scattering of cabins and homes that, by ordinance, must be built so they cannot be seen from Highway 1.

The settlement of Big Sur, less than 30 miles south of Carmel, consists of little more than a grocery, a deli, a gift shop and a post office. A mile or so north is Ventana, the 60-room inn that is terraced up the mountainside, 1,200 feet above the Pacific.

Ventana means window , and indeed from its lofty perch it frames a scene of redwoods and grassy slopes. Deer, fox and raccoons pass by guest quarters, which are furnished with window seats, fireplaces and beds with hand-painted headboards, handmade quilts and loads of pillows. Honeymooners make pilgrimages to Ventana simply for the privacy it offers in a mystic world of timeless beauty. Ventana is booked tight on weekends, sometimes six to eight weeks in advance. Between May and October it is nearly impossible to get a room, especially the ocean-front accommodations that come with hot tubs.

Ventana’s early discoverers were actress Ali McGraw and the late Steve McQueen, followed by Goldie Hawn, Jack Nicholson, Chevy Chase and Alec Guinness. Other guests fly in regularly from New York and Chicago. Europeans learning of Ventana suffer jet lag for the sake of cleansing the spirit in the wilderness of Big Sur.

Instead of tennis or golf, guests hike in the woods or carry picnic lunches to deserted coves on the ocean. If one cannot get along without “Jake and the Fat Man” or “L.A. Law,” well . . . there is cable TV. Still, one comes to Ventana to explore the hills and beaches, to soak in a sauna, to sunbathe, to read and snooze and listen to the birds and relive moments past with someone special.

Ventana’s restaurant provides a window on the Pacific, a site Gourmet magazine called “far and away the most spectacular on the California coast.” The bar has a fireplace and is the chosen spot on a foggy night. When the sun shines brightly, guests gather on a deck that offers a magnificent view of the ocean, studying a menu that lists duck liver pate, warm pears stuffed with Stilton cheese and walnuts, prawns on pasta and other delights.

If all goes according to plan, next spring the new multimillion-dollar Post Ranch Inn will begin welcoming guests on a site opposite Ventana. It is the first new luxury resort to appear in Big Sur in two decades, and will offer ocean-view rooms with sod roofs along with tree-house units and other accommodations scattered through the forest. Floor-to-ceiling windows framing the Pacific will take in meadows, a lagoon and groves of madrones, redwoods and ancient oaks. With a ban on private cars, guests will be delivered by shuttle from an isolated parking entrance to the main lodge, which will include a restaurant, bar and library. Like Ventana, the Post Ranch Inn will aim to indulge the weary traveler in search of solitude, in hopes of gaining international fame among the cognoscenti.

Elsewhere, shelter is provided at Big Sur Inn, where I awoke one morning after the rains last March to the murmur of a creek rushing by my window. Built during the 1920s, Big Sur Inn is rustic, with a mood that fits the Big Sur scene. The stormy night before, shutters banged against redwood siding and buildings shuddered in a wind that shrieked from the Pacific.

Big Sur Inn was built by Norwegian Helmuth Deetjen, who played recordings of Chopin, Bach and Beethoven as guests dined by candlelight in four small rooms.

Although Deetjen has gone to his reward, his philosophy and hospitality is carried on without pretension by the caretakers of this somewhat ramshackle old inn. I listened while a receptionist described accommodations to a caller: “They’re old and very rustic and so if you prefer a Holiday Inn atmosphere, I doubt that you’d enjoy it here.” Still, most do. In summer, rooms are frequently booked two and three months in advance.

Manager Bettie Sue Walters arrived in Big Sur after graduating from UCLA 18 years ago. Like others, she was attracted by the mystic fulfillment of this wilderness and vows she’ll never leave.

Receptionist Michael Surace, 22, of Upstate New York, was tooling along the coast when he stopped at Big Sur Inn five years ago. Fog swirled outside and candles glowed inside. “I felt as if I’d walked into a familiar room.” Surace also doubts he’ll go home again.

Sixteen years ago, Bob Bussinger turned in his ticket as a stockbroker in Carmel to wait tables at Ventana. Now he manages the resort. Recently, when faced with a tempting offer to manage a hotel in Los Angeles, he strolled up to Nepenthe, once a favorite watering hole of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. There he drank in the magnificence of Big Sur, listening to bird songs and studying breakers colliding against cliffs below until the thought of leaving dissolved.

A longtime resident told me once: “This place should be a spiritual discovery for each person who drives by.” Indeed it is. From his cottage on Partington Ridge, high above Highway 1 near Ventana, author Henry Miller wrote lyrically of Big Sur, and is credited with creating its legend. Miller, who settled in Big Sur in 1944, declared that “this is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look.” Life magazine did a spread. Time magazine called it “the most beautiful spot in the world.” Then along came Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to star in the film “The Sandpiper.”

Miller had written in the late ‘50s that living was cheap and the residents were friendly. Soon, a caravan of hippies invaded Big Sur on foot and in VW vans. Within 10 years, the number of vacationers visiting Big Sur doubled.

Alarmed at the increase and the threat of developers, photographer Ansel Adams argued that Big Sur be declared a national park, even though two-thirds of the land already was a federally owned forest. Residents opposed the idea, fearing an even greater invasion if more rangers were deployed and more campsites were created and the fame of Big Sur spread. Big Sur, they argued, meant freedom and, after a series of hearings, they won their case.

With fewer than 1,300 residents, Big Sur appears at times to be deserted. There are no traffic lights, no banks, no movie houses. In the shopping center--if indeed it can be called that--a general store carries camping supplies, bait and tackle, bins of wild rice, sunflower seeds, rolled oats, organic raisins and jars of jellybeans and rock candy. The deli turns out sandwiches ranging from turkey and Black Forest ham to liver, sausage and corned beef. Or one can stop at Nepenthe for an “Ambrosiaburger” and a pink lemonade and take in the view.

Signs are scarce along the highway, so one must ask directions. A narrow, twisting road cuts off Highway 1 near Ventana to Pfeiffer Beach, where immense breakers create islands in the sand and the ocean is a whirlpool of powerful undertows. Back along the highway, bridges span rivers and canyons, and cormorants swoop down to meadows behind misty veils that mirror rainbows, scenes that inspire artists.

Poet Robinson Jeffers referred to Big Sur’s “lion colored hills” that indeed are yellow in summer, but during winter appear a shocking green. The voice of the ocean is never far.

Some residents still live without electricity and telephones, as they did when Henry Miller arrived. The Beat generation was inspired by Miller’s poetic description of Big Sur. New arrivals grew marijuana in the hills and begged along the highway. With the later arrival of the hippies, society’s dropouts had settled in. Some occupied abandoned shacks in the mountains, but most just lived in their cars. Although residents say most have left, one still sees couples dressed like the flower children of the ‘60s. Those remaining seem to have joined the longtime residents in their dedication to the preservation of Big Sur.

Bearded Dave Whitney, 50, arrived in Big Sur 20 years ago to “avoid ulcers and alcoholism” as a Newport Beach stockbroker. He works at Big Sur Inn as a woodcutter, a dishwasher, a waiter, a wine steward and a maid. Indeed, he was making beds while I visited. He recalled a recent telephone call from a wealthy stockbroker friend. “He told me, ‘Dave, I’m rich but I envy you.’ ”

At Big Sur, Whitney lives on a hillside with a cat named Eternal Bliss. Contentment is his reward for abandoning the old life. Picking up a pile of dirty sheets, he asked, “Do you have any idea how wonderful it is to wake up to the lovely green trees and the blue sky and not have to worry about the rest of the world?”

GUIDEBOOK: Big Sur

Getting there: From Los Angeles, take Highway 101 to San Luis Obispo and follow Highway 1 to Big Sur, 310 miles total. (Air service is provided to Monterey by United Express West, USAir Express and Delta Skywest.)

Where to stay: Ventana, Highway 1, Big Sur 93920. (408) 667-2331. Rates are $155-$775.

Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn, Highway 1, Big Sur 93920. (408) 667-2378. Rates are $38.50 to $110.

Ripplewood Resort, Big Sur 93920. (408) 667-2242. Housekeeping cabins on the river and in the forest, $49.50 to $88.

River Inn Resort, Pheneger Creek, Big Sur 93920. (800) 548-3610. Units face Big Sur River. Rates are $50-$135. Served by a grocery, restaurant and Bob Webber’s British pub (The Six Bells of Big Sur), with imported beers, ploughman’s lunch, cornish pastie, fish and chips.

Big Sur Cabins and Campground, Highway 1, Big Sur 93920. (408) 667-2322. Cabins with kitchens rates are $88 for two; $8 for each additional person. Cabins without kitchens start at $71.50; $38 for tent cabins for two, $8 for each additional person. Camping for two costs $20; $3 for each additional person.

Big Sur Lodge in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, P.O. Box 190, Big Sur 93920. (408) 667-2171. There are 61 cottages containing from two to four units. Rates are $90 double, $100 for four, $115 for six. A heated pool, gift shop, restaurant.

For more information: To inquire about camping at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park and Andrew Molara State Park, call (408) 667-2315.