In Praise of ROUGHING IT by Mark Twain

Who among us, in a moment of traffic temper or status-quo stress, hasn't just wanted to chuck it all and "light out for the territories?"  I ask the question rhetorically, knowing the craving of the American psyche for open roads and uncluttered horizons that promise possibility.  Even in today's point-and-click world, where people increasingly prefer screen-mediated reality to actual experience, the allure of the frontier (or at least the little bit that remains) still resonates, as indicated by the popularity of television shows like "Yukon Gold," "Life Below Zero," and that voyeuristic survival thriller, "Naked and Afraid."  Even today, though we get our adventure from a screen, we prefer it in a setting of rugged individualism.
     In 1861 when Mark Twain boarded a stagecoach for the mining country of the Sierra Nevada, the frontier had little patience for dilettante dreamers.  As Twain  writes, the lawless land attracted "a driving, vigorous restless population. . .not simpering, dainty, kid-gloved weaklings, but stalwart, muscular, dauntless young braves, brimful of push and energy. . .the very pick and choice of the world's glorious ones."  Twain sums up the pagan temperament of this population with a loving indictment:  "They fairly reveled in gold, whiskey, fights, and fandangos, and were unspeakably happy."  Twain found the hopeful epicenter of this energy in Virginia City, where riches flowed from the silver spigot of the Comstock Lode.  Roughing It, with its descriptions of a boom town caught in the grips of speculative frenzy, creates the impression that Twain found romance not in the thrill of getting rich (or for that matter, the risk of going bust) but in simply staking a claim.  Of course, Twain did hope to get rich, but thankfully for the literary world, he discovered that he had more talent with a pen than a pick-axe.  Twain's foray through mining country provided the seed from which sprouted some greatest short stories in American literature.
     William Wordsworth, that lyrical sage of the Romantic period, saw literary force in the experience of emotion recollected in tranquility.  By the time Twain penned Roughing It, he'd traded frontier adventure for pursuits that, if not exactly tranquil (speaking now of the heartbreaks that beset Twain's personal life), entailed a more settled domestic routine.  Residing first in New York State and later in Connecticut, he must have felt light years removed from the frontier and its vigorous vagabonds.  One pictures him comfortably passing a New England winter, warmed by the fireplace as snowflakes coat the window pane,  drawing on a wellspring of memory to depict the landscape of his Western wanderings.  Perhaps channeling Wordsworth, Roughing It verges, at times, on the poetic, as exemplified by Twain's descriptions of Hawaii, for whose shores he departed as correspondent for the Sacramento Union journal after tiring of the Sierra.  Having climbed Haleakala to view the sunrise, Twain writes of the magical sight that draws tourists even today:

Presently vagrant white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea and valley; then they came in couples and groups, then in imposing squadrons; gradually joining their forces, they banked themselves together, a thousand feet under us, and totally shut out land and ocean. . .Clear to the horizon, league on league, with shallow creases between, and with haze and other stately piles of wispy architecture lifting themselves aloft out of the common plane. . .there was little conversation, for the impressive scene overawed speech.  I felt like the last man, neglected of the judgement, and left pinnacled in mid-Heaven, a forgotten relic of a vanished world. . .while the hush yet brooded, the messengers of the coming resurrection appeared in the east.  A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soon the sun emerged and looked out over the cloud waste, flinging bars of ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow caps with blushes, purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy vapor palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendings and combinations of rich color.

It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory of it will remain with me always.

     In December 1993, atop Haleakala for my own communion with the dawn, I witnessed a similar scene.  Somewhere, stashed away in a box of relics, a photo of it yet resides (although, taken with a disposable camera purchased from a supermarket--I had quite a limited budget in those days--it depicts mostly a grainy blur).  But perhaps I don't need the photo.  In the manner of Wordsworth, filled with the power of emotion recollected in tranquility, I think I remember the moment.  And, I realize that I experienced somewhat differently than Twain.  The sunrise I recall resembled less the splendor of resurrection than a poached egg atop a bed of mashed potatoes.  In confessing this, I no doubt risk a condemnation of both my character and my literary sense.  For a Haleakala sunrise to inspire in me only thoughts of food, while a proper writer like Twain perceived its sublime dimensions, surely bodes ill for my travel writing ambitions.
    In my defense, I offer the following excuse:  our hotel had a nice breakfast buffet, and I blame my fixation on matters more mundane than sublime on my desire to partake of its pleasures before the kitchen stopped service.
     Somehow I think Twain, the sage humorist of American literature, would have found that funny.