Tom Wolfe's California by Michael Anton, City Journal Autumn 2012

 Saw this on the City Journal Site.
Sort of a history lesson as well.
There are some good articles here and I recommend it. That is just my view, ya know.
If it were not for the idiots who elect the idiots in Sacramento, this would be an awesome place to live.
I admit that I like it where I live and work. The Mojave Desert is a beautiful place. I also have the Mountains to the West and South that I see every day. The Ocean is but three hours away. One can, if so inclined, snow ski or snow board in the morning and surf in the afternoon. The Colorado River is three hours away. Just from where I am located.
I enjoy my drive to work every day................
Always remember the idiots in Sacramento.

"There is, in California, an inherent strangeness that has always attracted loners, dreamers, and outliers. Hemmed in on all sides by mountains, forests, deserts, and the sea, California is an island in every sense but the literal, with its own distinct climate, air, soil, flora, and fauna. Geographically and culturally, California is a world unto itself."

 "The first white man to lay eyes on it was the Portuguese explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who anchored in San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542. It was more than 200 years before a party of religious ascetics finally returned, bent on saving souls. The first settlement they built, Mission San Diego de Alcalá, was 1,500 miles from the colonial capital of Mexico City, a four-month trek on foot through treacherous desert. Over the next 50 years, the Franciscan friars managed to crawl their way north, one mission at a time, 21 in all, each a day’s walk from the next. And walking was necessary, at least northbound. The prevailing winds on the coast blow from the north-northwest, and the California Current streams south virtually every day of the year. Sailing “downhill” is, to this day, a breeze and a blast; north is a miserable business. Rather than beating relentlessly upwind, the Spanish in Mexico would head to their more important possession, the Philippines, all the way across the Pacific, and recross the ocean to visit California on the return trip. Well before the term was invented to describe Australia in the age of sail, California was afflicted by the “tyranny of distance.” Only the mildness of the weather and the abundance of the land mitigated what was, in every other respect, a hard, lonely life. Naturally, it drew a certain kind of man—and they were all men."


Tom Wolfe's California by Michael Anton, City Journal Autumn 2012