A Description Of Distant Roads

Another incredible title for a travel book.  This one from the missionary Juan Crespí, who in 1769 took a walk from Baja California to San Francisco and back.

Really appreciate the translation with careful annotations by Alan K. Brown.  Here’s Crespí on the origin of the name Carpinteria.

Carpinteria

I wonder if he stopped to get a burger at The Spot.

My favorite part of the book so far though is this poem.

I found it a soothing pastime late one evening to make a map of Crepsí’s trip.

He must’ve seen some interesting stuff.

Much boring stuff as well:

That photo from the collection of Harry Crosby, who photo’g’d much of Crespí’s trail in Baja California.

Not to be confused with the other Harry Crosby:

But he yearned to escape the rigidity of everyday life in Boston. His experience in France made it unbearable to live among what he called “dreary, drearier, dreariest Boston” and to put up with “Boston virgins who are brought up among sexless surroundings, who wear canvas drawers and flat-heeled shoes.” He wanted to escape “the horrors of Boston and particularly of Boston virgins.” Any sense of propriety was wiped out by a lust for living in the moment, forgetting all risks and possible consequences.

The Fire Princess

On July 9, 1928, Crosby met 20-year-old Josephine Noyes Rotch, the daughter of Arthur and Helen Ludington Rotch in Boston. Ten years his junior, they met while she was shopping inVenice at the Lido for her wedding trousseau… “She was dark and intense… since the season of her coming out in 1926-7, she had been known around Boston as fast, a ‘bad egg’…with a good deal of sex appeal.”

They met for sex as often as her eight days in Venice would allow.