If Utopia exists in America, it is here, set against the mythically beautiful seascape of Big Sur. Amy Wilentz visits a realm where writers, artists, and thinkers strive, and thrive

The sun is setting over the Pacific. It does this, amazingly, every evening, and no one is surprised. These ten or so astronomical minutes are witnessed by millions of people once a day as they drive along the coastal roads, or set up barbecues in their backyards, or head home on the freeways in Marin, or walk their dogs in Malibu—witnessed with, usually, no great emotion and little intensity of observation, even though we are all spinning eastward away from the sunset at about seven hundred miles per hour. But seen from up here above the sea on the ridge at Big Sur, through plateglass windows two stories high, the sunset seems contained—created to be watched, to be respected. Tonight, the sun sinks quickly through the blue fog break that runs along the horizon, and plunges down, in one fast, fiery explosion, into the water.

Twilight is an art in this place, and yet the setting is really just a hotel restaurant—I'm having dinner, not a religious experience. A young man in black at the next table raises a glass of wine, examines it absently, and says to his friend, in an Australian accent, "Perhaps California has lost its spark?" Well, his back is to the window, so he missed the sunset. Or maybe he's talking about the wine. Behind me, a raucous fire crackles in an open hearth, an earthly response to the blaze of the setting sun. It's cold outside. Rain is coming.

The Post Ranch Inn—home of the astonishingly beautiful Sierra Mar restaurant—is the latest iteration of the old Big Sur utopian fantasy, carried to its most refined, sybaritic, and widely palatable extreme. Big Sur is dotted with such resorts; and indeed it has always been a haven for those who sought a way of life that diverged from the norm. Bohemians straggled in, writers hid themselves, artists gathered in communes, alternative medicine practitioners flourished, and arbiters of America's latest philosophies found the freedom to act—and act out—against the backdrop of the brutal and eternal Pacific.

Big Sur has its place in the long line of American utopias. When the Puritans came to the New World, they imagined their destination as the City upon a Hill, the new Jerusalem, and a beacon of righteousness unto the world. Soon enough, dissatisfied or malcontent, many of these new Americans began the country's westward expansion, and the golden mountains of California, the land's farthest reach, became the New World's new world.

After all, who could raise objections to a place where the sun always shone and where—it would eventually be discovered—gold came out of the dirt? The new Promised Land was a direct counter to the Puritans' dark, dour version of the perfect human community. Instead of facing snow, cold, and darkness, Americans would find themselves in a land of perpetual warmth and eternal pleasure. Unlike his stern New England counterpart, God here would be friendly, generous, a big help, a nice guy, handy with a hammer.