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Talking Location With .. Jill Caugherty – SAN FRANCISCO and YOSEMITE

9th June 2023

Jill Caugherty#TalkingLocationWith Jill Caugherty, author of The View from Half Dome

Traveling to San Francisco and Yosemite National Park.

The majority of action in my historical novel, The View from Half Dome, takes place in 1934 at Yosemite National Park. After a tragic accident, Isabel, the protagonist, flees her mother’s tenement in San Francisco to find her older brother James, who works for the Civilian Conservation Corps at Yosemite. There, she falls in love with the park’s majestic beauty. Inspired by Enid Michael, the park’s only female ranger-naturalist, Isabel hikes, learns new skills, and discovers an inner strength she never knew she had. But even as she relishes her independence, she hides her grief, along with a terrible secret she fears will destroy relations with her family. And when she receives upsetting news from home, Isabel must decide if she can assist her family without sacrificing her chance at a new life.

The peace and redemption that Isabel finds at Yosemite elevate this gorgeous national park into a character of its own. Descriptions of the park starkly contrast with the scenes in cold, foggy San Francisco, where Isabel and her family are down on their luck, struggling to make ends meet. In fact, her desperate life in the gritty city prompts Isabel not only to long for a taste of freedom, but ultimately to plot her escape to Yosemite.

I first visited Yosemite as a child, decades ago, in the eighties. Since then, I have scheduled three recent trips, all of which were unfortunately canceled: the first two trips in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, and the third, in April 2023, canceled as a result of the record-setting amount of snow in the park, causing road and trail closures.

In lieu of visiting in person, I drew my research about Yosemite in the thirties from two out-of-print books, Yosemite in the Thirties: A Remembrance and The Joy of Yosemite: Selected Writings of Enid Michael, Pioneer Ranger Naturalist, edited by Fernando Penalosa, as well as a 1935 Yosemite National Park Brochure published by the United States Department of the Interior.

Thanks to these sources, I was able to describe Isabel’s first view of the amazing public wildflower garden, which was managed by Enid Michael, Yosemite’s first female ranger-naturalist: “She stood still, catching her breath at the fiery blur of red, pink, green, blue, yellow and purple blooms. Long stems sprang toward the sun; paths crisscrossed through the maze. Isabel recognized Indian paintbrushes, geraniums, marigolds, sunflowers, strawberries. Vivid midnight larkspurs receded to misty forget-me-nots… In the center of the field ran a little stream. Around them towered the snow-capped Sierras.”

Jill Caugherty

Isabel also joins Enid on guided nature walks and leads children on a hike to Vernal Falls. “… the trail climbed up a long, slipper granite staircase of cliff along the river. The children shrieked as clouds of mist from the waterfall drenched them… Half a mile from the top of the falls, they stopped to view the brilliant rainbow hues against the sunshine of the cascading water sprays: rose-purple, iris-blue, golden-green.”

Over time, as Isabel grows physically and mentally stronger, Enid tells her, “That’s Yosemite’s magic. It brings out things people didn’t know were inside them..”

Isabel’s ascent of Half Dome coincides with a turning point in the novel: If she returns home, as her mother and brother expect, will she sacrifice her chance at the new life she has begun to imagine?

At the summit of Half Dome, she is awe-struck by the view: “Way below, the miniature waterfalls tumbled, and Isabel felt a vast, timeless essence enveloping her on the summit, as if for a moment, she had merged with Nature, and was one of the grand old sentinels of rocks, silent observe to the tragic and magnificent happenings thousands of feet below… Against the clouds, a hawk winged over the rocks, dipping and wheeling as sunlight illuminated its dark feathers.”

Jill Caugherty

For Isabel, like many thousands of visitors to Yosemite every year, the park’s beauty is calming and restorative, and briefly helps the young protagonist forget her grief and guilt. Enid Michael, along with the legendary photographer Ansel Adams. and his wife Virginia, also stress the importance of preserving this natural beauty. Ultimately, however, Isabel must decide how to forge her own path forward.

JILL CAUGHERTY

Catch Jill on Twitter: @JillCaugherty

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