Puerto Suelo Pass & La Ventana

 

In To a God Unknown Steinbeck merges two landmarks from the Los Padres NF, the Puerto Suelo Pass and The Window, the namesake for the Ventana Wilderness.

"The trail went into a pass of shattered granite, and the next moment the
two men looked down on a new fresh world. The downward slope was
covered with tremendous redwood trees, and among the great columned
trunks there grew a wild tangle of berry vines, of gooseberry, of sword-ferns
as tall as a man. The hill slipped quickly down, and the sea rose up level
with the hilltops."

The Esselen Spirit Trail goes through the Window, westward to the ocean, and to an Island of the Dead.

 

The Original Dust Jacket

The original dust jacket for To a God Unknown is shown below.  There is a man-mountain image. Two women flank him. Also note the tree that is placed appropriately as a hard-on. I suspect this is an insult to Campbell, a fuck you Joseph. Also, this image is ironic because the story is not about a man and two women. The relationships between Joseph, Elizabeth, and Rama is not the focus of the book. The irony here is that the back story is about Carol and two men, Steinbeck and Campbell. Thus, reverse the genders in the image to a women between two men.

The artwork was done by artist Mahlon Blaine, a friend of Steinbeck. Obviously, Steinbeck had input on the art.

See:  Taylor, Nick. "Mahlon Blaine, John Steinbeck, and 'The Maniac' (1941)." The Steinbeck Review 9, no. 1 (2012): 73-84.