The Ahwahnee

The Ahwahnee is the hotel in Yosemite Valley where Willie Keith and May Wynn spend a night that changes the intimacy of their relationship. The surrounding spectacle and the hotel’s comfortable interior give the encounter an atmosphere of romance, while the contrast between Willie’s pleasure and May’s distress complicates that impression.

Setting and Arrival

Willie and May stand together in moonlight beside a tall pine in front of the hotel, their cheeks touching and their breath visible in the cold. A voice calls for the fire to fall, and a red cascade of embers pours from a cliff through the darkness. As cowboy musicians begin a melancholy love song, the two turn toward each other and kiss. The natural spectacle and music make the hotel’s setting part of the scene’s courtship, not merely its backdrop.

The Night at the Hotel

After walking arm in arm into the hotel, they cross a bright lobby decorated with multicolored Indian hangings, skins, and horns, then ride the red-lacquered elevator three floors. Willie does not return to his own room until after a long winter night. His last glimpse of May is of her smiling in a simple white nightdress, her red hair loose over her bare shoulders; he settles into an armchair, absorbed in happiness. That image is incomplete: in her room below, May is crouched in a chair, shivering and crying. The hotel scene thus holds two sharply different experiences of the same night, one of satisfaction and one of distress.

Breakfast and Significance

A couple of hours later, after May telephones Willie and they admit they are both awake, they meet for breakfast in the dining room. White sunshine fills the room; through its tall window they see the nearby cliff, dark-green pine forests against snow, and the distant white peaks of the Sierras. The fine tablecloth, fresh flowers, bacon, eggs, and hot coffee make a composed, comfortable counterpoint to the unsettled night. Willie jokes that the experience cost him $110, then clarifies that this was the ransom he paid to get leave from the Caine. The hotel therefore joins romantic memory to the practical cost of shore leave, while its morning calm does not erase the emotional difference the night has left between the two.