Deetjen on phoneWith its rough hewn redwood interior and collection of antiques scattered about as decoration, one can tell that Deetjen’s Restaurant and the adjoining Big Sur Inn is a treasure trove of anecdotes and stories. With the release of Anita Alan’s hardcover book, Big Sur Inn: The Deetjen Legacy, the local author tells the tale of the unique longtime Big Sur landmark with a collection of photos, a batch of the restaurant’s recipes, a meticulously researched history of the founders’ family and a set of poems by nature poets Walt Whitman and Robinson Jeffers.

Alan’s story about how she fell in love with the quirky outpost of structures in Castro Canyon is almost as good as the other yarns unearthed by her book. Back in 1961, Alan was driving up the serpentine Highway 1 in her old Chevy with a friend and the friend’s young daughter. As she was driving through the sweeping, redwood-canopied turn in front of the inn, Alan’s car sputtered to a stop, causing her and her passengers to seek shelter at Deetjen’s for the evening. When her friend became seriously ill and was transported to Monterey for surgery, Alan’s one night stay turned into a weeklong sabbatical in the redwoods.

Every evening during that week, Alan and her friend’s daughter were invited to enjoy their dinners at the table of Helmuth Deetjen, the owner and builder of the rustic compound. Over evening meals, including a memorable leg of lamb, Alan became intrigued by the inn’s enigmatic owner. “I was just charmed by his presence,” she says. “He had a very serious side and a very playful side.”

FireplaceIn a way, Alan sees her book as a way of describing the history and character of both the lodging establishment and Helmuth Deetjen himself. “The book is as much about him as the place, because they are inseparable,” she says.

In the hardcover tome, Alan says that Deetjen, who was a fan of poems like Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Redwood-Trees,” moved from his native Norway to the United States in part to seek out the towering conifers. After stays in New York and Los Angeles, where he was drawn to esoteric organizations like the Rosicrucian Order and the Self Realization Fellowship, Deetjen and his new wife Helen moved to Big Sur and completed the inn before the outbreak of World War II.

To celebrate their new home, the Deetjens decorated their new place with some festive-looking red fall foliage and invited their new neighbors to stop in for a housewarming get-together. The couple was surprised when their guests left early in the evening. It turns out that the vibrant vegetation hung on their new residence’s walls was poison oak.

One intriguing aspect of Deetjen’s is that following Helmuth’s death in 1972, a nonprofit corporation called Deetjen’s, Inc. was formed to keep the establishment up and running. After getting the inn on the National Register of Historic Places, the nonprofit started to pour all the money it made into the upkeep of the establishment.

There are a few reasons why Alan spent a year and a month of her life researching the inn’s history and telling its story in her book. One is that she has always felt extremely comfortable at the inn’s rustic accommodations and restaurants. “It’s everything you wish home would be,” she says.

Another is that the establishment, which doesn’t conform to today’s meticulous building codes, is a preserved piece of a more carefree era. “I think the inn is frozen in time,” Alan says. “It’s a living treasure. It’s not pickled.”

ANITA ALAN celebrates the release of Big Sur Inn: The Deetjen Legacy with a book signing and reading at The Works, 667 Lighthouse Ave. in Pacific Grove, Thursday, Sept. 7, at 7pm. Free. 372-2242

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