"Robert Louis Stevenson," photographed for the Knox Series, 1880. Larger.
Californians have always been concerned about wild fires, but did you know that one of the world's best loved writers once set fire to the central coast?
During an 1880 visit to "The Old Pacific Capitol, Monterey," Robert Louis Stevenson became fascinated by the specter of burning Monterey pines.
To visit these woods when they are languidly burning is a strange piece of experience. The fire passes through the underbrush at a run. Every here and there a tree flares up instantaneously from root to summit, scattering tufts of flame, and is quenched, it seems, as quickly. But this last is only in semblance. For after this first squib-like conflagration of the dry moss and twigs, there remains behind a deep-rooted and consuming fire in the very entrails of the tree. . . .
. . . . I wished to be certain whether it was the moss, that quaint funereal ornament of Californian forests, which blazed up so rapidly when the flame first touched the tree. I suppose I must have been under the influence of Satan, for instead of plucking off a piece for my experiment, what should I do but walk up to a great pine tree in a portion of the wood. . . , strike a match, and apply the flame gingerly to one of the tassels. The tree went off like a rocket. . . .
Luckily, Stevenson escaped and later wrote one of his best-known books, Treasure Island, which contains descriptions that borrow heavily from his experience of our central coast.
"Napa Valley Fog," photographer, date unknown. Larger.
It's almost routine for travelers in California to appreciate the natural beauty of the state—-miles of rugged coastline, saw--toothed granite peaks, endless plains covered in wildflowers. But sometimes it's what you don't see that fires the imagination.
Though he spent only a year here, Robert Louis Stevenson came to know California as few writers would. Living in the cabin of an abandoned silver mine on Mount St. Helena, Stevenson was captivated by the ocean of fog that blanketed the Napa Valley.
. . . to sit aloft one's self in the pure air and under the unclouded dome of heaven, and thus look down on the submergence of the valley, was strangely different and even delightful to the eyes. Far away were hilltops like little islands. Nearer, a smoky surf beat about the foot of precipices and poured into all the coves of these rough mountains. The color of that fog ocean was a thing never to be forgotten. For an instant, among the Hebrides and just about sundown, I have seen something like it on the sea itself. But the white was not so opaline; nor was there, what surprisingly increased the effect, that breathless, crystal stillness over all. Even in its gentlest moods the salt sea travails, moaning among the weeds or lisping on the sand; but that vast fog ocean lay in a trance of silence, nor did the sweet air of the morning tremble with sound.
Robert Louis Stevenson left a permanent impression upon the cultural history of California. A state park bears his name and helps preserve some of the same landscape he described in his 1883 book The Silverado Squatters.
"The Silverado Squatters," frontispiece for The Silverado Squatters, 1904. Larger.
According to Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, "We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend."
Wandering the world, Stevenson made many honest friends, one of which was former sailor C. Evans, who showed Stevenson and his newly married wife around his petrified forest, a "pure little isle of touristry."
This tardy favorite of fortune—hobbling a little, I think, as if in memory of the sciatica, but with not a trace that I can remember of the sea—thoroughly ruralized from head to foot, proceeded to escort us up the hill behind his house.
"Who first found the forest?" asked my wife.
"The first? I was the man," said he. ...
"Were you surprised?"
"Surprised? No! What would I be surprised about? What did I know about petrifications—following the sea? Petrifaction! There was no such word in my language! I knew about putrefaction, though! I thought it was a stone; and so would you, if you was cleaning up pasture."
First built in 1867 to protect Central Pacific railroad tracks from Sierra snow accumulations, wooden snow sheds provided a solution to a vexing winter problem.
Though some passengers found the snow sheds too gloomy, they could become marvelous windows whenever their dark interiors gave way to startling Sierran tableaus, as Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson found on a train trip west to San Francisco.
"Across the continent, the snow sheds on the Central Pacific Railroad, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains," drawn by Joseph Becker, date unknown. Larger.
When I awoke. . . I was puzzled for a while to know if it were day or night, for the illumination was unusual. I sat up at last, and found we were grading slowly downward through a long snowshed; and suddenly we shot into an open; and before we were swallowed into the next length of wooden tunnel, I had one glimpse of a huge pine-forested ravine upon my left, a foaming river, and a sky already coloured with fires of dawn. I am usually very calm over displays of nature; but you will scarce believe how my heart leaped at this. It was like meeting one's wife.
Robert Louis Stevenson came to California in 1879 to pursue a courtship. He married Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in 1880 and honeymooned on the slope of Mt. St. Helena.
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