Conservation as caretaking: protecting California’s central coast

July 10, 2026-

Three years ago, The Wilderness Land Trust purchased a 160-acre parcel in California’s Ventana Wilderness from the San Francisco Zen Center. Previously part of their Tassajara Mountain Zen Center, the Church Creek property overlooks the ridges and valleys of the interior coastal range. Last week we completed the transfer of the property to public ownership.

“There’s an old Zen saying: ‘If I take care of the mountains, they will take care of us.’ We share this quality of intimate connection with nature with The Wilderness Land Trust, and we deeply appreciate the protection and care this land will continue receiving in the future.” —Sozan Miglioli, former President of San Francisco Zen Center

For centuries the connection between Zen practice and nature has been interwoven. In Japan, where the Zen school of Buddhism began in the 13th century, many training monasteries and temples were built in the mountains, and many Zen teachers would include the name of the mountain where they trained in their own name. In Zen practice, the mountains mirror back what you are trying to create in yourself, to find stillness in the midst of the hum of life around you.

So, when the San Francisco Zen Center was founded in 1962, they began looking for a site for their own mountain monastery. The old Tassajara Hot Springs and Hotel, located a few hours south of San Francisco, provided the perfect opportunity. The Zen Center purchased several properties around the hot springs in 1967 and established the Tassajara Mountain Zen Center. Just two years later, the land around it was designated as the Ventana Wilderness. Since then, generations of Zen students have come to Tassajara to be in the wilderness, walking its trails, sitting beneath its trees, and learning its lessons.

For the Zen Center, the decision to work with the Trust to protect the Church Creek property came easily: “One of the main tenets of Zen is the understanding that there is no separation. When one thing happens it has an effect in the whole universe. This means there is no separation from nature— the way we take care of nature is the way we take care of ourselves. Conservation is an expression of this caretaking” says Sozan Miglioli.

With incredible vistas, flat building sites, and access via a public road, the Church Creek property would have been at high risk of development had it sold to a private buyer. The property contains a spring-fed tributary to Church Creek, as well as a trailhead and popular trails. The cost to the surrounding wilderness if developed would have been great.

Now protected as public lands, with about 65 acres of the property added to the wilderness area, that threat has been removed. The Church Creek property also adjoins another 160-acre property which the Trust added to public lands in 2008. These properties connect to over 2 million acres of public lands in the Central Coast, one of the U.S.’s largest biodiversity hotspots.

These lands, like all wild places, need our care. One of the many reasons we work to protect them is to ensure generations to come will have the opportunity to visit them to find stillness, inspiration, and connection.