William Irwin Thompson

CALIFORNIA is not so much a state of the Union as it is an imagination that seceded from our reality a long time ago. In leading the world in transition from industrial to postindustrial society, California's culture became the first from coal to oil, from steel to plastic, from hardware to software, from materialism to mysticism, from reality to fantasy. California became the first to discover that it was fantasy that led to reality, not the other way around. --- William Irwin Thompson, author of Pacific Shift, which predicted that the center of Western civilization was moving to the Pacific from Europe as quoted in California the Beautiful.

William Irwin Thompson got it right but it was Beijing not Tokyo. The Pacific Shift, of which California was the leader, is a post-modern culture. Ancient wisdom, like accupuncture, co-exists with modern technology, the way the Golden Gate Bridge blends into the Headlands. All cultures and all epochs simultaneously with no linnear history. And the natural beauty that Galen Rowell photographed, eternal.

The new edition of California the Beautiful, featuring 100 color photographs by Galen Rowell and edited by Peter Beren is being released on October 20, 2009 from Welcome Books. Look for it.