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In this episode of A Big Sur Podcast, I sit down with Brita Ostrom — longtime Esalen resident and author of Steeped: A Big Sur Elixir of Sulfur and Sage.

Brita’s life bridges several revolutions at once: the islands of the Pacific Northwest, the Haight-Ashbury explosion of 1966–67, the psychedelic and political turbulence of the Summer of Love, and the early, formative years of the Esalen Institute.

We talk about Haight Street — the overwhelming beauty of it all: the posters, the music, the saturated colors. And later, how the fog began to settle in. About sidewalks so crowded you could barely move, and children who quietly went missing. About free love and jealousy, about massage tables and incense, about the uneasy dance between material success and spiritual seeking.

Brita describes arriving at Esalen for the first time — the candlelit baths, the shock of nakedness, the silkiness of sulfur water against cold skin. She reflects on figures like Fritz Perls, Storm, and Lars — and on what it meant to come of age inside a cultural experiment that promised liberation but carried its own tensions and blind spots.

This is not nostalgia. It is a reckoning.

What does it mean to “drop out”? What does it cost? What does it give?
What remains when the fog clears?

Brita’s memoir is a meditation on community, intimacy, ritual, and the long arc of a life shaped by Big Sur’s muse-like pull.

As she writes in her dedication:

“Dedicated to those who walk this earth while gazing at the stars.”

I hope you’ll enjoy this thoughtful, tender, and at times unsparing conversation.

— Magnus

• Esalen Institute
• Haight-Ashbury
• Golden Gate Park
• Henry Miller Memorial Library

People Mentioned

• Fritz Perls
• Alan Watts
• Ebba Malmborg
• Carlos Castaneda
• Cesar Chavez
• Ken Kesey
• Dennis Murphy
• Selig Morgenrath

Bands of the Era (Referenced in the Conversation)

• Grateful Dead
• Jefferson Airplane
• Moby Grape
• Quicksilver Messenger Service
• The Charlatans

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This podcast is a production of the Henry Miller Memorial Library with support from The Arts Council for Monterey County!

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