at Western Michigan University. His books include John E. Fetzer and the Quest for the New Age.
Wilson applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson and reported the following:
The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson is an old-fashioned travelogue that narrates the Concord Sage’s one and only trip to the Far West in 1871. While in California, Emerson and his party traveled widely to visit several of the state’s emerging tourist attractions. The midpoint of the trip, and the midpoint of the book, finds Emerson and friends enjoying a respite at Calistoga, a hot-springs resort in the Napa Valley founded by the Mormon 49er, Samuel Brannan. It was here that Emerson was inspired to write a paean to the Golden State, lamenting in a letter to his wife that if only they were younger, “we might each claim his quarter-section of the Government, & plant grapes & oranges, & never come back to your east winds & cold summers.” Famously, Emerson had once joked that it was “Divine Providence that the New England states should have been first settled, before the western country was known, or they would never have been settled at all.” His visit to California confirmed him in this opinion.Learn more about The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson at the University of Massachusetts Press website.
After a day of bucolic splendor in Calistoga, a few in Emerson’s party decided to risk the treacherous wagon road over Mount St. Helena to the Geysers, a weird volcanic region of boiling mud pots and steaming fumaroles. Their encounter with this stygian landscape is described in vivid detail on page 99 of the book:As the group climbed the canyon of Pluton Creek—the “Ascent into Tartarus” [as the] guidebook called it—everywhere could be heard subterranean gurgling, hissing, whistling, and puffing, and the ground grew increasing warm and soft, and the air more pungent with the hot smell of sulfur that stung one’s nostrils and permeated one’s clothes. All about, the rocks were stained with crystalized sulfur, alum, copper and iron sulfate, and a variety of other minerals, yellow, white, red, green, and black. […] As the group advanced, they were introduced to the seemingly endless series of weirdly shaped features, each with hellish names like the “Devil’s Kitchen,” the “Devil’s Inkstand,” and “Pluto’s Punchbowl,” this last being a rocky basin in which thick, black water boiled and tossed ceaselessly. Next was the “Witches’ Caldron,” where “steam-jets spurt out, hissing and puffing on every side, the air [...] thick with vapors from every chemical combination possible to imagine.” The whole atmosphere radiated danger and instability, although the guide blithely reassured everyone that no major explosion had occurred in the canyon since 1860.Until Yellowstone was developed for tourism in the 1890s, California’s Geysers were immensely popular with tourists who were fascinated by such startling geologic features. Sadly, the Geysers were tapped for geothermal power in the 1960s, and little of the original features remain today. Indeed, most of the natural sites that Emerson and his party visited—from the San Francisco Peninsula to the San Joaquin Valley to Yosemite—existed in a state of pristineness that is hard to imagine today. And this, I believe, is one of the singular strengths of The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Using letters, guidebooks, photographs, and other primary documents, I have meticulously recreated scenes of a now vanished California, allowing readers to experience the state afresh through the Transcendentalist eyes of Emerson and his fellow travelers. To this extent, I think the Page 99 Test works remarkably well, and would give browsers a good sample of the kind of “thick description” that afficionados of travel writing will find irresistibly engaging.
--Marshal Zeringue
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