Steinbeck's California

"I remember the that Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother.  They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love.  The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to the west and kept the the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding-unfriendly and dangerous.  I always found in myself a dread of the west and a love of the east.  Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that the morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias."

―John Steinbeck, East of Eden

"When Samuel and Liza came to the Salinas Valley all the level land was taken, the rich bottoms, the little fertile creases in the hills, the forests, but there was still marginal land to be homesteaded, and in the barren hills to the east of what is now King City, Samuel Hamilton homesteaded...From their barren hills the Hamiltons could look down to the west and see the richness of the bottom land and the greenness around the Salinas River."

―John Steinbeck, East of Eden

"When June came the grasses headed out and turned brown, and the hills turned a brown which was not brown but a gold and saffron and red - an indescribable color."

―John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels. They gathered mountains and valleys, rivers and whole horizons, the way a man might now gain tittle to building lots.” 

―John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“On the wide level acres of the valley the topsoil lay deep and fertile. It required only a rich winter of rain to make it break forth in grass and flowers. The spring flowers in a wet year were unbelievable. The whole valley floor, and the foothills too, would be carpeted with lupins and poppies.

―John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Why don't you go on west to California? There's work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in. Why don't you go there?” 

―John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath