What Is The Elephant?

 

 How I came to know the Elephant

I've lived in California for most of my life, having felt an itch in the East that blew me westerly.  The longer that I have lived in Los Angeles, the more I've yearned to get out of the city to photograph and discover something about the land.  

I have come to realize that the history of California hasn't changed very much.  We all know about the Gold Rush of 1849, the largest migration of Americans across America, Manifest Destiny realized.  The guidebooks of the day spelled out a journey which turned out to be more than anyone could imagine and while it was wrought with hardship, many kept their wits or maintained an overwhelming sense of adventure.  When they arrived, the West was an elixer of chaos, opportunity and risk. Money moved around fast and furious for some, but not for many. People gambled everything they had or could borrow to get here, perhaps with the intent to stay for a short time, grab the wealth and take home a tony life.  In absolute gridlock, they came across the plains, around the horn or through the jungles of Panama.  Often they dumped their load as they travelled across the mountains or desert and walked in with what they could carry on their backs.  Crews of ships abandoned their vessels in the harbor to go on land in search of the dream.  

Some would realize riches and build new lives -- some going home, some staying here. People from all over the world flooded in.  It was not much different from today. There was a global economy and hyper-inflation.  Rent in San Francisco could be $1000 a month for living quarters -- back then.  Some would spend their fortunes wildly and if one ended up broke, the fun was in getting rich.  The money could come out of the ground in a matter of weeks and if you lost it, you merely dug another hole.

Yet, it was not so easy. For others, there was a disappointment in the disillusionment that the dream to make $10,000 could end up yielding only $500.  Families back home had to be provided for in the absence of the bread winner and everything was mortgaged or sold so that the adventurer could pay for his travel, work and living costs. Some sent for the families if they could. It has been written that a lonely man could abduct another man's wife and her children, dump the children and then lose the woman or sell the woman to other lonely men, long before her husband could find her.  Women could divorce their husbands if they didn't make enough money. Some men wrote home to their waiting wives to tell them they were having a good time and they'd see them when they got around to it! Ladies from France were the finest money could buy and they were here for the taking, or for purchase. For many who arrived here (men, women or families), returning home in the East could be improbable and perhaps never realized. A fancy family plot, high on the hill could be a pile of rocks in the desert or a piece of concrete etched with a stick in a poorer plot.  Like it or not, for many adventurers, this was home.

"Seeing the Elephant," was a term which made its way through the Civil War, but was associated with the movement west.  

People are still drawn here for the same reason:  opportunity. This is the legacy which California carries.  Things don't change.  People complain about how expensive it is to be here, how crowded it is, grid lock, looser attitudes, nuts & flakes or whatever.  It has always been like this. California was the new place where men and women could share freedom to express themselves.  It has always been as magical as the elephant the emigrants from the east sought.

The saying, "seeing the elephant," ultimately lost favor in its time because it came to be  associated with something negative - failure. Yet, those who still dare to follow the elephant would find the pachyderm living among them.  

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