If you are an Easterner and meet the Native Son first in New York (and the only criticism to be brought against him is that he sometimes chooses—think of that—chooses to live outside his native State!) you wonder at the clear-eyed composure, the calm-visioned unexcitability with which he views the metropolis. There is a story of a San Francisco newspaper man who landed for the first time in New York early in the morning. Before night he had explored the city, written a scathing philippic on it and sold it to a leading newspaper. New York had not daunted him. It had only annoyed him. He was quite impervious to its hydra-headed appeal. But you don't get the answer to that imperviousness until you visit the California which has produced the Native Son. Then you understand.
Yes, Reader, your worst fears are justified; I'm going to talk about scenery. But don't say that I didn't warn you! However, as it's got to be done sometime, why not now? I'll be perfectly fair, though; so—
For the Native Son has come from a State whose back yard is two hundred thousand square miles (more or less) of American continent and whose front yard is five hundred thousand square miles (less or more) or Pacific Ocean, whose back fence is ten thousand miles (or thereabouts) of bristling snow-capped mountains and whose front hedge is ten thousand miles (or approximately) of golden foam-topped combers; a State that looks up one clear and unimpeded waterway to the evasive North Pole, and down another clear and unimpeded waterway to the elusive South Pole and across a third clear and unimpeded water way straight to the magical, mystical, mysterious Orient. This sense of amplitude gives the Native Son an air of superiority... Yes, you're quite right, it has a touch of superciliousness—very difficult to understand and much more difficult to endure when you haven't seen California; but completely understandable and endurable when you have.
—Californiacs read every word, Easterners skip this paragraph—
Man helped nature to place Italy, Spain, Japan among the wonder regions of the world; but nature placed California there without assistance from anybody. I do not refer alone to the scenery of California which is duplicated in no other spot of the sidereal system; nor to the climate which matches it; nor to its super-mundane fertility, nor to its super-solar fecundity. The railroad folder with its voluble vocabulary has already beaten me to it. I do not refer solely to that rich yellow-and-violet, springtime bourgeoning which turns California into one huge Botticelli background of flower colors and sheens. I do not refer to that heavy purple-and-gold, autumn fruitage, which changes it to a theme for Titian and Veronese. I am thinking particularly of those surprising phenomena left over from pre-historic eras; the "big" trees—the sequoia gigantea, which really belong to the early fairy-tales of H. G. Wells, and to those other trees, not so big but still giants—the sequoia sempivirens or redwoods, which make of California forests black-and-silver compositions of filmy fluttering light and solid bedded shade. I am thinking also of that patch of pre-historic cypresses in Monterey. These differ from the straight, symmetrical classic redwoods as Rodin's "Thinker" differs from the Apollo. Monstrous, contorted shapes—those Monterey cypresses look like creatures born underground, who, at the price of almost unbearable torture, have torn through the earth's crust, thrusting and twisting themselves airward. I refer even to that astonishing detail in the general Californian sulphitism, the seals which frequent beach rocks close to the shore, a short car ride from the heart of a city as big as San Francisco.
—and this—
California, because of rich gold deposits, and a richer golden, sunshine, its golden spring poppy and its golden summer verdure, seems both literally and figuratively, a golden land golden and gay. It is a land full of contradictions however. For those amazing memorials from a prehistoric past give it in places a strange air of tragedy. I challenge this grey old earth to produce a strip of country more beautiful, also more poignant and catastrophic in natural connotation, than the one which includes these cypresses of Monterey. Yet this same mordant area holds Point Lobos, a headland which displays in moss and lichens all the minute delicacy of a gleeful, elfin world. I challenge the earth to produce a region more beautiful, yet also more gay and debonair in natural connotation, than the one which enfolds San Francisco. For here the water presents gorgeous, plastic color, alternating blue and gold. Here Mount Tamalpais lifts its long straight slopes out of the sea and thrusts them high in the sky. Here Marin County offers contours of dimpled velvet bursting with a gay irridescence of wildflowers. Yet that same gracious area frames the grim cliff-cup which holds San Francisco bay—a spot of Dantesque sheerness and bareness.
—and this.
This is what nature has done. But man has added his deepening touch in one direction and his enlivening touch in another. The early fathers—Spanish—erected Missions from one end of the State to the other. These are time-mellowed, mediaeval structures with bell-towers, cloisters and gardens, sunbaked, shadow-colored; and in spots they make California as old and sad as Spain. Later emigrants—French—have built in the vicinity of San Francisco many tiny roadside inns where one can drink the soft wines of the country. Framed in hills that are garlanded with vineyards, these inns are often mere rose-hidden bowers. They make California seem as gay as France. I can best put it by saying that I know of no place so "haunted" in every poetic and plaintive sense as California; yet I know of no place so perfectly suited to carnival and festival.
All of this is part of the reason why you can't surprise a Californian.