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Alta California: From San Diego to San Francisco, a Journey on Foot to Rediscover the Golden State

Name: Alta California: From San Diego to San Francisco, a Journey on Foot to Rediscover the Golden State
Brand: Counterpoint LLC
SKU: 9781640094444
Price: 13.99 USD
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Contributors:

Nick Neely

Publisher:

Counterpoint LLC

Binding:

Paperback

Book Category:

Travel

Book Subcategory:

Essays & Travelogues, United States, Special Interest

Book Topic:

West, Hikes & Walks

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The product is eligible for a complimentary return within 30 days from the date of purchase. Furthermore, individual items are shipped within 24 hours of receiving the order.

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Specifications +

Release Date:

2020-06-09

ISBN 13:

9781640094444

Weight:

1.16 lbs

Size:

9.00 x 6.00 x 1.50 inches

Pages:

432

Mint Condition +

product description

Description

National Bestseller: This fascinating account of one man's 650-mile trek from San Diego to San Francisco captures the many layers of California's fiendishly complex history.

"[Makes] you fall, or refall, in love with California . . . wildfires and insane housing prices and all . . . What a journey, you think. What a state." --San Francisco Chronicle

In 1769, an expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá sketched a route that would become, in part, the famous El Camino Real. It laid the foundation for the Golden State we know today, a place that remains as mythical and captivating as any in the world.

Despite having grown up in California, Nick Neely realized how little he knew about its history. So he set off to learn it bodily, with just a backpack and a tent, trekking through stretches of California both lonely and urban. For twelve weeks, following the journal of expedition missionary Father Juan Crespí, Neely kept pace with the ghosts of the Portolá expedition--nearly 250 years later.

Weaving natural and human history, Alta California relives Neely's adventure, while telling a story of Native cultures and the Spanish missions that soon devastated them, and exploring the evolution of California and its landscape. The result is a collage of historical and contemporary California, of lyricism and pedestrian serendipity, and of the biggest issues facing California today--water, agriculture, oil and gas, immigration, and development--all of it one step at a time.

About the Author
Nick Neely grew up south of San Francisco, in the oak and chaparral on the bay side of the Santa Cruz Mountains. He holds an MA in Literature and the Environment from the University of Nevada, Reno, and MFAs in nonfiction and poetry from Hunter College and Columbia University. He is the author of two books, Alta California and Coast Range. His nonfiction has appeared in magazines such as Orion, Audubon, Mother Jones, High Country News, Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, The Georgia Review, and Ecotone. He is a recipient of PEN/Northwest's Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, a UC Berkeley-11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship, and the 2015 John Burroughs Nature Essay Award. He lives in Hailey, Idaho, with his wife, the painter Sarah Bird.