A Los Angeles Times national bestseller. Published on November 5, 2019 by Counterpoint Press.
Alta California weaves nature and humanity, past and present, in surprising and serendipitous ways as author Nick Neely follows the first overland Spanish expedition 250 years later―on foot
“Alta California, Neely’s account of his improbable journey, touches on many other layers of California’s fiendishly complex history. An uncommonly sensitive writer, Neely trains his eye equally on the natural landscape, on plant and animal life, and on the variegated human worlds through which his strange itinerary takes him. … What results is a kind of rhapsody of Californian chaos, emerging in densely packed but lyrically shaped paragraphs.” —Alex Ross, The New Yorker
“An ambitious plunge into the heart of his home state …. His book is a landmark work of history …” —Dean Kuipers, The Journal of Alta California
“This book does everything you want it to: time travel, precise reporting, and a journey into an ordinary world that turns fantastic.” —Craig Childs, author of Atlas of the Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America
“It’s a book that will change how readers view the California coast.” —Miriam Pawel, author of The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty That Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation
Order via Bookshop.org. Check out a map of Nick’s route.
From the Publisher:
In Alta California, Nick Neely chronicles his 650-mile trek on foot from San Diego to San Francisco, following the route of the first overland Spanish expedition into what was soon called Alta California. Led by Gaspar de Portolá in 1769, the expedition sketched a route that would become, in part, the famous El Camino Real. It laid the foundation for the Golden State we know today, a place that remains as mythical and captivating as any in the world.
Neely grew up in California but realized how little he knew about its history. So he set off to learn it bodily, with just a backpack, trekking through stretches of California both lonely and urban. For twelve weeks, following the journal of expedition missionary Father Juan Crespí, Neely kept pace with the ghosts of the Portolá expedition―nearly 250 years later.
Weaving natural and human history, Alta California relives his adventure, tells the story of Native cultures and the Spanish missions that soon devastated them, and explores the evolution of California and its landscape. The result is a collage of past and present, of lyricism and pedestrian serendipity, and of the biggest issues facing California today―water, agriculture, oil and gas, immigration, and development―all of it one step at a time.
Read more reviews from the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, and Alta, or recent profiles about Nick and his trek from the Almanac and Idaho Mountain Express.
Excerpts from the book can be found in Longreads, Contra Viento, and Terrain.org.
Interviews in the LA Review of Books, The Statesider (with photos from the trek), or here on this site in a brief Q&A.
Listen to Nick’s conversations about the book with Michael Krasny on KQED-San Francisco (52 min), Madeleine Brand on KCRW-Los Angeles (14 min), or Jade Hindmon on KPBS-San Diego (7 min).
Podcasts are available from Alta (22 min), California Sun (27 min), or The History of California Podcast (56 min).
Watch a conversation with Scott Burton at The Community Library in Ketchum, ID, or with Felicity Barringer Taubman for The Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford.
“A sprawling record of a unique adventure.” —Kirkus
“Neely’s naturalist, erudite work will appeal to readers of Thoreau’s Walden and Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire.” — Publishers Weekly
“Tough-minded, poetic, and relentlessly strange, Alta California creates an entirely new vision of the Golden State.” —Daniel Duane, author of Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast
“Alta California is a travel narrative like none I’ve ever read before: frank and funny and unapologetic in its refusal to see a landscape without including the myriad histories that compose it.” —Elena Passarello, author of Animals Strike Curious Poses
“This engaging book is what happens when a skilled naturalist brings his sharp eyes to the bizarre juxtapositions of the California landscape. What a hike Nick Neely has taken, a true voyage of discovery on foot through the wonder and horror of how we have inhabited this place.” —Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit
“He hikes across highways, skirts suburbs, and sleeps in dry creeks, making the ‘developed’ world feel unknown and primal. We experience the same wonder he feels and begin not just to understand California’s past, but to glimpse its troubled, yet still beautiful, essence.” —David Gessner, author of All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West
“Nick Neely offers an adventure for the Anthropocene … If Cheryl Strayed or Bill Bryson had dared venture into the unexpected wilderness of the coastal region between San Diego and San Francisco, and if they had the athleticism and ecological background of a Nick Neely, they might have written something like this fascinating and entertaining travelogue.” —Scott Slovic, editor of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
432 pages — Prologue and nine chapters — Maps included
Hardcover, $26.00 — Paperback, $17.95
Order via Indiebound, Powell’s, or Bookshop.org.
Nick Neely 