To Charles Baxter from Monterey, CA, September 9, 1879: “My news is nil. I know nothing, I go out camping, that is all I know; Today I leave, and shall likely be three weeks in camp…and now say good-bye to you, having had the itch and a broken heart. — R.L.S.”

It had only taken Robert Louis Stevenson a week to get kicked out of his first boarding house on account of his dreadful appearance, scabs and swelling from a severe case of eczema. Not far away was the home of Senora Bonafascio where lived Mrs. Fanny Osbourne, “the object of my affections,” he said. Her children, Lloyd and Isobel or “Belle,” were there, too, also Fanny’s younger sister, Nellie Vandegrift. Louis couldn’t go there either. The amateur emigrant’s morale had taken a hit when Fanny seemed to waver and give in to second thoughts about her willingness to carry out her part of the dream that had brought RLS 6,000 miles into her living room. He had tempted fate the whole way because he was a walking case of chronic illness for most of his brief life. Stevenson’s “Wild Woman of the West” had become a vacillating woman of the West before his eyes. Now that her Lou was actually here, more bones than flesh, hardly the dashing figure she knew in France, just short of broke and without a job or prospects and apparently disowned by his family, Fanny recognized the need to indulge in some serious introspection and re-evaluation. Her estranged husband, Sam Osbourne, was also coming down from San Francisco for a visit. Laying low seemed to be the best strategy for Louis and the cheapest way to do that was to go camping.

But Stevenson had another reason to go into the hills. The writer in him was more active than ever and was eager to go in search of material for his next travel book. Stevenson ignored the signals his emaciated body was sending to his brain. “My illness is a thing outside myself,” he always told his friends who knew better. To carry out his plan, Louis got help from Joe Strong, the young artist who had just been secretly married to Belle, Fanny’s daughter. It was a secret because they knew Fanny would blow up when she found out. In the meantime, maybe Joe could score some points with his unaware mother-in-law by unwittingly assisting her scrawny new boyfriend to commit suicide. He didn’t yet know or understand this recent arrival enough to see that for all his alleged genius, Stevenson’s behavior was dangerously stupid and the Grim Reaper, never far away, took notice.

Robert Louis Stevenson was thrilled to be in America and he wanted to write all about it. To do it on horseback like a cowboy of the Old West when it wasn’t yet old appealed mightily to him. “Travels with a Donkey” was only a year in his rearview and he still felt the same way about things. “I travel for travel’s sake…to come down off this featherbed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.”

There was still another good reason for RLS to head for the hills. The summer fogs so famous in the Monterey area had not yet abated and they were assaulting the writer’s lungs so he decided to rise above them. To get started, he had Joe find Manuel Wolter from whom he rented a spring wagon and two horses and soon the lone wagoneer waved good-bye to Joe. He was heading for the mouth of the Carmel Valley but stopped along the way to inspect the ruins of the Carmel Mission. Then he turned east and wandered into a canyon for about two miles and by sundown had arrived at the farm of Edward Berwick, a transplanted Englishman who already knew Stevenson through Joe Strong. Mrs. Berwick provided a Mexican meal and the evening was spent in talk, talk in which RLS made his host unload all he knew about California history. When it came to bedtime, Mrs. Berwick diplomatically found a way to have their guest sleep in the barn because of his dreadful appearance, the scabs again.

The morning was sunny and Berwick advised Louis to leave Wolter’s horses and wagon with him, explaining that Stevenson’s proposed route was too rugged. Berwick supplied his guest with one of his own horses, better suited for the terrain. Stevenson, the stick man, probably weighed less than the average racehorse jockey and might have been quite the spectacle to Berwick while he watched RLS on his horse, going off in search of his next book. Four miles later, horse and rider reached the entrance to Robinson Canyon where was the trail that should take them up into the Santa Lucia Mountains and above the fog. All afternoon they kept going up through thick groves of redwoods and finally emerged into sky country in a cluster of round hills populated with cattle. The sun was going down when RLS found a place he would call camp next to the unspectacular San Clemente Creek. The Grim Reaper was already there, waiting for him.