By 1850, life in New York City and the eastern United States had become routine and workaday. Long gone were the wilderness and the pioneers who had tamed the land east of the Appalachians. But out West, the pioneer spirit was being lived by thousands who were racing to a wild and unsettled California in search of gold.
Many people went west seeking riches, but many stayed behind. Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, realized that his readers wanted to know what was happening in California. Easterners were anxious to hear news from the gold fields, perhaps to understand what a loved one was experiencing or maybe just to feel that pioneer spirit vicariously.
Very few people today have heard of Bayard Taylor, but 150 years ago, he was one of the most widely read authors in the United States. A wanderer at heart, Taylor was sent by Greeley to California with orders to send reports of his adventures by any means possible. He visited a wild and booming San Francisco, traveled to the placer mines and reported on his travels throughout the state.
Between visits to the mines, Taylor decided to walk from San Francisco to Monterey to witness the California Constitutional Convention in Monterey; a walk that took him through the Santa Clara Valley. In his book Eldorado, as Taylor approaches Morgan Hill, he describes “picturesque variety of animal life on all sides,” and “a landscape which I may have seen equaled but never surpassed.”
When Taylor reached what is now Morgan Hill, he visited the ranch of Mr. Murphy and stayed for the night. After dinner, Murphy offered Taylor an evening horseback ride to the summit of nearby El Toro. He described the view from the summit:
“We looked on a vast and wonderful landscape. The mountain rose like an island in the sea of air, so far removed from all it overlooked that everything was wrapped in a subtle violet haze, through which the features of the scene seemed grander and more distant than the reality.”
He described seeing “range behind range … parted by deep, wild valleys.” Then, “…glimmering through the mist, the mountains seemed to have arrayed themselves in cloth of gold …”
His full description is several hundred words that bursts with excitement and wonder, as if he is describing some wondrous exotic place in the Alps or Africa. No, he is enthralled with our back yard.
Taylor’s description of the view from the top of El Toro reminds me that the exotic and wonderful is not measured by the length of the plane flight or the drive. He reminds me to look at things around me as if for the first time every time. If we can do that, we realize that “exotic” is all around us.
Last Saturday was the annual climb up El Toro. Over 700 people climbed to the top to see what Bayard Taylor saw. It’s true, these people were not looking across a wild land that was the obsession of a gold-crazed nation 160 years ago, but the view is just as sweeping and distant today.
Good for all of you who went, and I encourage those of you who didn’t to go. Choose your day carefully and you will see Mt. Tamalpais in Marin and the San Francisco skyline. Get a copy of Bayard Taylor’s Eldorado, and flip to page 97 to read his full description of his ride with Mr. Murphy. Try to see that view as he did. It is everything he says it is.
