Valyermo

I've repeatedly had dog spit on my reading glasses today. This is because I've been working on the floor and, if you're a mid-sized lab mix whose name is Zola, my face is at dog-tongue level. I'm working on the floor because there is no furniture where I am, and this is because Slowtwitch has a new home as of today.

Readers might remember stories we've written about the Angeles Crest Century, and Spunky Canyon, and I, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends, have been nosing around the back side of the San Gabriel Mountains lately. Like hawks circling we finally found something on which to pounce, or perhaps something pounced on us and we just don't know it yet. Time will tell.

We (Monty and I) thought we had our place in Slowtwitch Springs. Unfortunately, though having water is normally a good thing, we had too much of it. The ground we chose was an island surrounded by the Angeles National Forest. It was also an island of dirt sitting atop a lake nine feet below the ground—great if you're dropping a well, bad if you're dropping a septic tank (We needed to drop both). So we were forced to abandon.

Three miles due southeast by car from The Springs we struck paydirt, or at least dirt on top of other dirt. Our new spot is at about the same elevation as the old—4200' above sea level—but we're out of the trees and into the high desert. The foliage here is Joshua Trees and reasonably tall California Junipers. I suppose if I had my 'druthers I'd prefer to be right in a conifer forest, but our choice of riding roads and running trails, and some reasonable access to civilization, constrained us.

The deal is official. After our false start last time I thought I'd wait until the escrow closed, and that happened earlier this morning.

I bought a house which sits on 5 acres. It's smallish, about 1500', and is built atop a bluff and—like a Whitebark Pine atop a 10,000' Sierra peak— will get the full brunt of the wind during the Winter storms. It was built 40 years ago by a contractor who raised his children here and, shortly after his wife, died here. I bought the house from his estate, and will immediately take up the job of improving the property. Harry Church built his house out of concrete blocks, and I would like to think he'd approve of what I have in mind for the strong home he built.

Monty's on another several acres adjacent to mine, and he's building from the ground up. He's got a 31' travel trailer which sits on my spread while he's under construction. Then we've got another 5 acres we're buying together, and on that goes Xantusia. More on that later.

I'm going to omit all the reasons I decided to move here. The reasons are legion, and involve both why I'm here, and why I'm no longer (very often) in North San Diego County. The best way I can describe it is to tell you to put on headphones, slip a tape of Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite into the CD player, and imagine as you listen what sort of place that recording brings to mind (Copeland's Appalachian Spring can be substituted if Grofe is unobtainable). That's where I felt I needed to be, so long as there were a variety of twisty well-paved roads and twisty well-unpaved trails nearby. Then there's the fact that while I really like people in the particular, I don't much like them in general. In other words, I like them when I get to know them, but there are too many people in San Diego I'll never know, and if I'm not going to know them I'd prefer them not to be there. Since they just wouldn't go, I went.

I've met many of my neighbors in Valyermo. Several are descended from families who originally homesteaded here 80 and 90 years ago. Each neighbor is a quarter to a half mile from the next. I bought a jar of honey from my neighbors four or five doors down. They make it commercially—orange honey, sage honey, and so on. Two doors from them are the fellow who's building a space ship—out of concrete. There is a variety out here, but I've not met a bad apple yet.

Speaking of apples, I am finally in a spot where I can grow them. The lady who owns the farmer's market—she's been here 51 years—says, "You're too high for pears, cherries, peaches and nectarines. Apples, that's what you can grow, dear. Apples."

I got my P.O. Box today. Valyermo doesn't have mail delivery. It does have a one-room post office, and that's where my mail will come. Farmer's markets are 15 minutes away, WalMart is 25 minutes away, and add another 10 minutes to that for Home Depot and Lowes, stores on which I'll rely.

Cable and DSL will come to Valyermo—when monkeys fly. So the satellite guy comes in three days, and he's certainly not going to grant me the bandwidth to which I've become accustomed. Though monkeys don't fly, Hughes does, and I'll just be pining away for another satellite or three.

The Endless Pool shows up in a couple of weeks, and Lord knows I've finally got room for one now. Slowtwitch has also struck a deal with this fine pool maker, which we'll be announcing shortly. Suffice it to say, if you want to buy one of these, talk to us first.

There is a small lizard that only comes out at night. You'll rarely if ever see one. It tends to live in and around Joshua Trees. The name of this Lizard is Xantusia. I'm sure I host a lot of Xantusias, because my house is literally built around Joshua trees. The perimeter of the house dips and dives to accommodate them. So I host the Xantusias, or they host me.

Like Quintana Roo and Slowtwitch, I just like the name. Plus, it's thematic, which is always nice. Anyway, at some point Monty and I want to not only host Xantusias, but triathletes. There is no such place as a retreat for triathletes, at least none that we know of. So perhaps we'll have one. That's our plan, at least. We'd like to host swimmers, bikers, and runners, and especially those who do all three.

We'd like to host those who want to spend a lot and get the royal treatment, and also those who've got little or nothing to spend and just want to pitch a tent. But we're making this up as we go along, so we don't know what it's going to be until it "is." Whatever it is, I'd like to call it Xantusia. Monty is mulling that over.

This is the first of what will be quite a few updates on this project.