Ken Layne savors the western wanderings of Mark Twain over at Highways West:

As a recently retired L.A. Times’ Outdoors reporter remarked in his final column, it’s all but impossible to find a spot in the West that Mark Twain hadn’t visited and written about more than a century ago. Since Christmas, I’ve been slowly re–reading Twain’s hilarious account of his Western travels, Roughing It and realizing the extent of Twain’s wanderings.

(“Slowly re–reading,” because there’s so much adventure and great writing in every chapter that I don’t want to rush through them. Like most American kids, I was forced to read the book in grade school, but I’d forgotten it all and hadn’t understood it anyway. There is a special delight in reading Twain’s descriptions of places I’ve now explored many times: Mono Lake, Virginia City, the Wasatch Range, Lake Tahoe, Tuolumne Meadows, the Great Basin desert, etc.)

Starting at Chapter 62, Twain tells of his travels to the “Sandwich Islands.” Not only had I forgotten this entire section, I hadn’t realized just how much of this material was recycled by Hunter S. Thompson in The Curse of Lono. And I have no previous recollection of this passage, which describes not only the ancient Hawaiian sport of surfing, but Mr. Clemens’ attempts to learn the art…

[via amylangfield.com]