“I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light, gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of

invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother. They

were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from

the open sea, and they were dark and brooding-unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of

east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that the morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the

night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feeling

about the two ranges of mountains.”

John Steinbeck, East of Eden