Sublime

Most of this trail, like so many others first ‘discovered’ by Joe Walker (or, more accurately, pieced together from existing Indian trails), is now a state highway.

August 1876, and Walker died two months later. He was seventy-seven years old. The cause of death, says Bil Gilbert, was nothing more or less than ‘having lived long enough’. How to distil that life into six lines, containing

Walker rode on to California, hung up his saddle at his nephew’s ranch in Contra Costa County, and settled down to a calm, pleasant, dignified retirement, with no recorded bouts of nostalgia or restlessness.

Walker soon became disgusted by Frémont’s self-promoting histrionics and rank cowardice in the field – a combination he found particularly loathsome. They