Come winter, Californians often gloat to friends and family trapped in harsher climates. But forget trite descriptions of ceaseless sunshine—what about enjoying the California winter in terms of its picturesque disorder?
Though she spent only a few months in the Golden State, Mary H. Will ably captured the mild Santa Barbara season that is anything but wintry.
Thus, dear friends, in your snow-bound home, I feel how poorly words of mine can depict the charms of this summer-land. It is not that flower or shrub is newer or of sweeter perfume than are those which for a brief life we coax to grow, but it is the wildness and abandon of the scene, the out-door freedom, the present sunshine and oft recurring rain, the almost tropical warmth, the blue sky above—these are the fascinations of the spot. Here there are but few orange groves, but the graceful pepper trees line the streets, and are often covered with scarlet passion vines and bignonias of red and yellow hues. The magnolia grandiflora is in much favor as an ornamental tree, and grows to a great height. There is not what I would call one well ordered, carefully kept lawn in the whole place, but the wealth of disorder is picturesque.
A native of Pennsylvania, Mary Wills' 1889 A Winter in California conveys the perspective of an inspired visitor experiencing the landscape for the first time.
"View from Glacier point, Yosemite, California, USA," photograph by Sanjay Acharya, 2007. Larger.
Each year more than three million tourists find peace among the old sequoias and wild flowers of Yosemite National Park. But more than a century ago enjoying nature was somewhat of an extreme sport.
Mary H. Wills traveled from Pennsylvania to California seeking what she called "perpetual summer." On a horseback ride through Yosemite Valley, what she found was perpetual anxiety.
The horse on which I rode—I use the term entirely by courtesy, for that day I was the creature of circumstance, with neither power nor volition—was quiet, well trained, and with a decided will of his own...He early showed dissatisfaction with the weight of his load, and gave vent to a series of groans that were not tranquilizing. He also manifested a desire to go perilously near the precipice, and would rest apparently on nothing and at improper occasions.
The view is grand, but appalling. Deep down in the mountain-walled gorge before us sleeps the valley; its beautiful glades, its peacefully glinting river, its dark green pines, its heavily timbered slopes, all hemmed in by cliff-encompassing domes. No change of time or circumstance can ever efface from memory this ride to Glacier Point. One misstep, a falling rock, and there could be no salvation. You have taken, as it were, your life in your hands.
Mary H. Wills' travel journal A Winter in California, published in 1889, chronicles her disapproval of everything but the weather.
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