The establishment of the store attracted a great many campers.
California is the campers' state. Immediately after the close of the
rainy season they set forth. The wayfarer along any of the country roads
will everywhere meet them, either plodding leisurely through the
charming landscape, or cheerfully gipsying it by the roadside. Some of
the outfits are very elaborate, veritable houses on wheels, with doors
and windows, stove pipes, steps that let down, unfolding devices so
ingenious that when they are all deployed the happy owners are
surrounded by complete convenience and luxury. The man drives his ark
from beneath a canopy; the women and children occupy comfortably the
living room of the house--whose sides, perchance, fold outward like
wings when the breeze is cool and the dust not too thick. Carlo frisks
joyously ahead and astern. Other parties start out quite as cheerfully
with the delivery wagon, or the buckboard, or even--at a pinch--with the
top buggy. For all alike the country-side is golden, the sun warm, the
sky blue, the birds joyous, and the spring young in the land. The
climate is positively guaranteed. It will not rain; it will shine; the
stars will watch. Feed for the horses everywhere borders the roads. One
can idle along the highways and the byways and the noways-at-all,
utterly carefree, surrounded by wild and beautiful scenery. No wonder
half the state turns nomadic in the spring.
And then, as summer lays its heats--blessed by the fruit man, the
irrigator, the farmer alike--over the great interior valleys, the people
divide into two classes. One class, by far the larger, migrates to the
Coast. There the trade winds blowing softly from the Pacific temper the
semi-tropic sun; the Coast Ranges bar back the furnace-like heat of the
interior; and the result is a summer climate even nearer
perfection--though not so much advertised--than is that of winter. Here
the populace stays in the big winter hotels at reduced rates, or rents
itself cottages, or lives in one or the other of the unique tent cities.
It is gregarious and noisy, and healthy and hearty, and full of
phonographs and a desire to live in bathing suits. Another, and smaller
contingent, turns to the Sierras.
We have here nothing to do with those who attend the resorts such as
Tahoe or Klamath; nor yet with that much smaller contingent of hardy and
adventurous spirits who, with pack-mule and saddle, lose themselves in
the wonderful labyrinth of granite and snow, of cañon and peak, of
forest and stream that makes up the High Sierras. But rather let us
confine ourselves to the great middle class, the class that has not the
wealth nor the desire for resort hotels, nor the skill nor the equipment
to explore a wilderness. These people hitch up the farm team, or the
grocer's cart, or the family horse, pile in their bedding and their
simple cooking utensils, whistle to the dog, and climb up out of the
scorching inferno to the coolness of the pines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account