The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [333]
Insisting on seeing the sun set from the Grand Canyon’s north rim, the warm sky ablaze with ragged bands of orange, pink, and purple, Roosevelt leaned over the ledge to soak in the drama. His train didn’t leave for Barstow until six o’clock that evening, when the dusk would have thickened. Night comes to northern Arizona fast, as if someone were blowing out a candle. Back at the White House twenty-eight days later, he kicked himself for not having allowed two or three free days to explore the canyon. At the very least, he wished Oom John had been at his side during his unforgettable afternoon there. They could have philosophized about ledges. What was becoming clear from the looping 14,000-mile railroad journey was that the beauty of the American West—the real West—once again had Roosevelt spellbound. From the Grand Canyon onward to Los Angeles, all of Roosevelt’s speeches promoted, with intense vitality, the holy trinity of irrigation, forestry, and preservation.
VI
Roosevelt was immediately mesmerized by the high, dry light and yellowish shadows of southern California’s deserts, mountains, valleys, forests, and ocean. No wonder so many people were seeking out its charms. Aridity was a problem for California, so the more forest reserves the state had, the better off it would be. After Roosevelt crossed the Mojave, his pulse quickened as his train approached the San Bernardino Valley. A skirting of timber could be seen in all directions. In his speeches, he became blunt and outspoken about keeping paradise intact. Wherever Roosevelt went in southern California that May, his popularity with children was unprecedented for a politician—they adored him. Too young to remember Lincoln or the generals of the Grand Army of the Republic, boys aged five to fifteen had adopted President Roosevelt as their generation’s George Washington. They knew nothing of Yorktown or Chancellorsville but everything about the gallantry at Kettle Hill. They were in awe of their top-hatted hero, who shouted “Dee-lighted” and “Bully!” from platforms with a theatrical roar, as if he were giving the Rough Riders the order to “Charrrge!”
Riverside. Pomona. Claremont. Pasadena. Los Angeles. Strangers came up to Roosevelt offering their goodwill. Carrying himself straight as a ramrod, the president enjoyed being a moral exemplar—he was the heir of Lincoln and Emerson with a dash of Boone for good measure. Someday historians, he knew, would tell hundreds of stories about his frenetic time in southern California, so he leaned into his own character even more extravagantly than usual. In city after city he was greeted like an American immortal, never to be laid low. On soapbox after soapbox he whipped up Californian onlookers with fine Bryanesque oratory. They could almost burn calories just watching his body language. No American president had ever expressed America’s identity in such a flamboyant, kinetic way. Whether he was lunching at the Westminster Hotel or participating in the annual Fiesta de las Flores, Roosevelt was in love with southern California, particularly the San Gabriel Mountains, which spilled in all directions. Somehow the sky over the 165,000 square miles of California seemed to dance differently from the sky in the east, Roosevelt thought, showcasing shades of blue, purple, red, and gray he’d never known before in his brief acquaintance with Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona.85
“I am glad, indeed, to have the chance to visit this wonderful and beautiful State,” he told a crowd of 10,000 in front of the Hotel Casa Loma in Redlands. “But for the country itself, though I had been told so much of its beauty and its wonders, I had never realized or could not realize in