A New Eden

by Quent Cordair

  “I hope that’s a compliment, sir.”

  “I hope you would take it as one, ma’am.”

  She stayed beside him as they rode through a grove of limber pine, above which the view opened to a golf course that fell away in sculpted steppes to a narrow gorge. The long lush tracts of freshly mown fairways, bordered by poplar, willow, juniper and cottonwood, were bookended by neat rectangles of tee boxes and undulating greens bordered with lavender, firewitch and red valerian. Bunkers of clean, smoothed sand were stamped into the layout, strategically positioned to challenge a player’s ambitions and daring. A cascading creek meandered through the heart of the course before plunging in a thirty-foot plume into the gorge, on the far side of which, perched in an alluvial fan, a half-dozen holes more were accessed by a gracefully arched bridge of steel with abutments of local stone. The course’s verdancy was sharply delimited and incised by the rawness of the dun desert and the stubble of unforgiving sage and greasewood – a breathtakingly stark contrast between the improved and the unimproved, between the man-made and the natural, between the golfer’s heaven and his hell.

  They rode past a series of new homes under construction, the sites widely spaced for privacy, each perched in its own fold of the hillside’s apron. Most of the foundations were in place. The framing was started on some, nearly complete on others, but on a midday Friday – oddly, Paige thought – there wasn’t a worker in sight. In what would soon be the driveway of a sprawling three-level affair, with decks and balconies overlooking the course and gorge below, a backhoe sat silently amidst stacks of lumber and stone.

  Paige couldn’t help but finish the home in her mind’s eye. It was easy to imagine stepping out onto the deck from the kitchen on a cool morning, cup of coffee in hand, the scent of desert flowers and cut grass rising from the golf course, birds chirping and trilling over gurgling fountains, the sunrise painting pinks and blues on the snow-tipped peaks of the Garnets.

  “Nice view,” Ian said, finishing her thought.

  Paige nodded. “But where is everyone?”

  “There’s been a legal delay.”

  They rode on. She couldn’t imagine where her cowboy might be taking her for lunch, but the longer they rode, the less she cared. Padre’s gait was smooth and confident beneath her. With a nudge of her legs she asked for a trot – he raised his head smartly and stepped into it. Curious as to how much of his show training might still be there, she took the reins in both hands and, shifting her legs, brought him up to a canter, then back into a collected canter, which he handled admirably. Sliding her heels forward, she shifted her seat and asked for an extended canter – he lowered his head, stretched out and passed Ian, floating along like a twelve-cylinder sedan. She brought him back to a walk, rewarding him with a pat on the withers and an appreciative “Good boy!”

  Ian came up alongside, regarding her with a raised eyebrow and sidelong smile.

  “Now, if you can swing a proper loop while doing that, ma’am, the cattle should just fall in line behind you like baby ducks.”

  She laughed. “Maybe I’ll let you show me how that’s done.”

  “You never know – we might get a stray golf cart or two up this way this morning that need rounding up. Keep an eye out.”

  “I would pay to see that.”

  The road climbed and wound more steeply. The last and highest building site came with a view of the course’s signature hole, its tee boxes notched a hundred feet above the rim of the narrowing gorge, the fairway far below, across the chasm. By the foundation and framing in place, Paige estimated the residence would have not fewer than six bedrooms and as many baths, an infinity pool off the tiered back patio and what looked to be a four-car garage with a level above. A bulldozer was parked next to the garage in a space that would be the size of a tennis court when the grading was complete.

  A hundred yards farther up the road, before it made a hairpin turn to continue climbing along the front of the hill, their passage was blocked by a tall wrought-iron gate anchored in columns of stone, its closed leaves bound by a thick padlocked chain. Where the black paint had weathered and chipped away, rust had grown on the edges of the ornate scrolling. The design in the arched center of the leaves came together in an elegant, proud letter “H” in a Gothic script. Atop the gate’s left column, a security camera was pointed down along the road. A camera on the right column was aimed down at the padlock. A newer chain-link fence, crowned with barbed wire, extended from the gate, circumscribing the hill at a level elevation. Beyond the gate, the road was unpaved and rutted. Ian took a trail following the fence, crossing back easterly towards the front of the hill, above the route of their ascent.

  Viewed from the valley floor, the elevation above the resort had appeared almost entirely barren, covered only in scattered stone, loose sand, gravel, boulders and gnarled sage, but a closer inspection revealed the occasional length of rusted, broken pipe among the rocks, a bent, rusted nail here and there, orphaned ends of kinked wire protruding from the earth and, in places, scattered chunks and lengths of desiccated gray lumber.

  From the higher elevation, nearly all of the valley could be seen, and beyond. The narrow river, shallow enough to be fordable in places, snaked southeasterly from the gorge, out across the valley floor. The central boulevard continued south from the plaza, expanding to a four-lane after the first bridge, passing supermarkets and shopping malls in the newer section of town. To the river’s west lay a sprawling campus, in the heart of which a majestic glass cathedral reigned over a court of white multi-storied halls and smaller outlying buildings. South of the campus, arranged in neat, homogeneous grids, were hundreds of modest tract homes, all white with black trim. Homes east of the river, by contrast, were in diverse styles, sizes and colors, arrayed along curved tree-lined streets that wound and extended up into the eastern hills. On the southerly edge of town, an industrial park sat across the highway from a hospital with a red-crossed helipad adjacent. Several miles of open fields and barren white alkali flats stretched from the edge of town south to the airport. A reservoir, full to capacity with water the color of the sky, lay at the bottom of the valley, behind a long dam. Paige realized that the river was flowing not south but north, its origin in the release on the dam’s easterly shoulder.

  They were riding over a stretch of the trail high above The Sophia when Ian pulled up and dismounted. “Ready for lunch?” he asked.

  The westerly mountains rose higher yet, but the trail had climbed well above the easterly hills, beyond which the vast plains stretched away to serrated blue ranges along the seam between earth and sky. The world was clean, the air pure, scoured by the dry winds.

  “If the food is half as good as the view,” Paige answered, “it will be perfect.”

  They left the horses ground-tied on the trail. Ian retrieved a knapsack and untied his blanket roll.

  What hadn’t been readily visible from the path was that it passed directly above a complex of old stone foundations, the walls of which, in most places, had crumbled away entirely or were buried beneath dirt, stone, and weeds. It was difficult to discern which rectangles might have been part of a single structure and which of separate buildings, but whatever had stood here had surely dominated the south face of the hill: sections of the broken walls, protruding from the sage and scree, were over two feet thick in places. The uphill wall of the largest rectangle, within which a typical three-bedroom home would easily fit, was still mostly intact, the wall’s top edge flush with the slope above. It was a ten-foot drop to a mounded floor of tumbled stone and wood debris, all partially buried beneath greasewood and sand washed down from above or blown in on the winds. Remains of the side walls, jutting several feet above the slope in places, were notched where doors and windows would have been. On the downhill side, the end wall had surrendered and crumbled away entirely, leaving the belly of the interior completely exposed. Ian spread the blanket on the uphill wall, where they sat, feet dangling over the edge.

  The sun
had risen high. The breeze was warm on their faces. Ian produced a bottle of chilled white wine and two glasses, removed the cork, and poured. He raised a toast.

  “To another day in paradise.”

  She touched her glass to his. They drank, the sunbeams reflecting off the wine and the glasses, dancing across their faces, splashing in their eyes. The wine was crisp, light and good.

  “Paradise . . .” she mused aloud.

  He had used the word without a trace of sarcasm or irony. The dry ruins beneath their feet, the surrounding hills, and the alkali flats were predominantly in chalky browns, yellows and whites. The sparse native vegetation was all of the scrubby, hardier varieties, evolved over the eons to survive the long droughts, blazing summers and freezing winters of the high desert. From the reservoir, her eye followed the river, the presumable source of all things green in the valley proper. There were bends in the river’s line, but other segments were unwaveringly straight – it wasn’t a natural river at all, but a manmade canal.

  “Paradise – ” She smiled at the epiphany – “just add water.”

  Ian had laid out an offering of cheese, olives, fruit, and finger sandwiches. “When the first explorers came through this way,” he said, pausing to sample a strawberry, “the valley was a desolate wasteland. There was hardly a reason to even note it on the maps. Most of the early settlers passed north of here, following the Humboldt River west. The few who detoured this far south saw little if anything to recommend the valley – they barely paused on their way to California.”

  Paige watched his eyes. They were shaded by the brim of his cowboy hat, following the lay of the land with an easy acceptance and steady intent. His body was relaxed, at one with the place, as if he too had sprouted from the earth here, watered and grown by the river that was a canal. She followed his gaze, trying to imagine the unwelcoming, harsh emptiness that the valley must have been.

  “But one man came,” he said, “and that man stood alone on the top of this hill, above where we are now. He envisioned a paradise in this place – and proceeded to make it so.”

  There was solemnity in his voice. Paige set her glass quietly on the stone. “Do tell. . . .” she urged.

  He glanced at her, studying her in the same steady way he studied the land. Adjusting his hat, he took a bite of an olive, followed it with a sip of wine, and looked out to the horizon and beyond.

  “At the time, that man wasn’t even a man yet – ” he said, letting the story begin – “but a boy.”

  * * *

  Thomas Hale was fourteen when he and his father, a blacksmith, packed up their belongings and traveled from Massachusetts to Missouri, where they joined a wagon train headed for the gold fields of California. The year was 1852.

  The boy was deeply fond of his father, a great bear of a man who, despite his physical strength and gruff mien, was as gentle and encouraging with his son as a mare with her colt. He had raised and cared for his only child from the day his wife died of typhus, when the boy was less than a year old, providing his son with the best education he could afford, and from his own store of knowledge passing along everything he knew of metallurgy, smithing, and the ways of the world. An Irishman by birth and by heart, he was a passionate story teller. The son enjoyed nothing more than sitting at the hearth, listening to his father after a long day’s work spin the wildly colorful legends of the heroes and villains of Eire. When tales from the homeland ran thin, there were Greek and Roman myths to recount and readings from Chaucer, Dumas, and Sir Walter Scott. Enthralled himself with all things mechanical, he told his son of the remarkable inventions of the scientists and inventors of ancient times: the siege engine and screw pump of Archimedes, the wind wheel and force pump of Heron, the lathe and level of Theodorus. Together, they built a working model of Heron’s rudimentary steam engine, which had been invented eighteen hundred years earlier in Alexandria. Even before Thomas could read, he was fascinated by the diagrams and drawings in his father’s books on geometry, physics and engineering. Above all, his father passed along his love of knowledge and reading, his respect for accomplishment, his commitment to principle and good habits, and his zest for as much of life as one could wrap one’s arms around. When the decision was made to pull up roots and journey west, it was as partners: father and son as fellow Argonauts, on a grand adventure in search of their golden fleece.

  But on the trail to California, after having crossed the prairies, the Rocky Mountains and what is now the state of Utah, their party already severely diminished by Indian attacks, drownings, disease, trampling by oxen, and shootings accidental and intentional – after having survived nearly four-fifths of the odyssey to the promised land – Thomas’s invincible guide and protector fell victim to an invisible enemy. Within a day of showing the first symptoms of cholera, the boy’s father breathed his last breath.

  At the burial, only hours later, Thomas had been inconsolable. A great black anger welled up within him against the universe at large, a darkness that encompassed his fellow travelers. Their attempts to comfort him only made matters worse. He wanted nothing to do with anything or anyone – he had been left alone, suddenly, with no family, no teacher, no friend. The man he worshiped and adored was gone, and there would never be another to take his place. When the day ended and darkness fell, Thomas walked away from the wagon train and into the wilderness, headed south with a vague notion of going to Mexico, with nothing on his person but the clothes on his back, his knife on his belt and, in his satchel, a flint, a small package of hardtack and dried beef, and his father’s edition of Lyell’s Principles of Geology.

  Through the night and the next day he walked, seeing not a trace of humanity and scant signs of wildlife. The next evening he found himself standing atop a high hill overlooking a desolate valley.

  Close to the west, a range of snow-tipped mountains rose like the ramparts of a citadel. At the valley’s south end lay a shallow marsh fed by snowmelt, mostly dried up from the long summer’s heat, miles of alkali flats left in the ebb. The mountain shadows were growing long across the valley floor. The desert heat was cooling rapidly as the sky began to shift into the loveliest, most vivid palette he had ever seen – a parasol of pastels over hills turning tangerine and deep saffron, the mountains tinted cornflower-blue and violet. He gathered enough deadfall and brush for a small fire and, after a light supper, nestled down beside a low wall of stone he built to hold the fire’s heat. After reading a chapter of Lyell by firelight, he slept, with moonlight for his blanket and a stone for his pillow.

  He spent three days alone on the summit – reading, thinking, remembering his father, considering his future, weighing his options, taking in the view. On the fourth morning, the fire had gone cold in the night. The scant supply of brush and wood on the summit was exhausted, as was his meager store of food. But looking out over the valley, he judged it to be the most beautiful place he had ever seen. The assessment was, he knew, due in no small part to the fact that he, Thomas Thornton Hale, was the only person in the valley. He had never enjoyed the luxury of having even the smallest corner of earth he could call his own. He and his father had shared the bedroom of their two-room cabin. On the wagon trail, a person had to venture over a hill or around a stand of trees for any privacy from fellow travelers. He looked around him that morning, from the rocks at his feet to the far horizons, and he said – “My hill.” He said it to himself and to the land and to the sky – “My hill. My valley. My world.”

  There was no one there to dispute his claim. And so it was so.

  He wanted to memorialize the moment and the place, but there was nothing resembling a flag or stake to plant in the ground. He had burned all of the loose wood. Other than rocks and scattered scrub, the only thing of substance left nearby was a barely living, severely torqued tree – an ancient bristlecone pine, wide at its base, with stunted arms and spindly fingers reaching for the sky, a few clusters of needles still surviving in the branches, roots clinging tenaciously to the back side of
the summit. Other than a narrow strip of bark running up one side, the twisted torso and limbs were all but denuded, the exposed wood blanched white and polished smooth and hard as stone by the elements. Thomas carved his initials and the date into the trunk with his knife.

  Having left his mark, he wanted something of the place to take with him. Over the past days, he had noticed a long thin vein of reddish quartz, not more than a few inches wide, cutting diagonally across the summit like a scar, exposed between the upended layers of porphyritic strata. Scattered pieces of the quartz had broken off at the surface. He chose one the size of a dove’s egg and put it in his pocket.

  He was ready to rejoin civilization. There were things he needed to do before he could return to the valley.

  On his journey back to the wagon trail, finding himself quite hungry, he attempted to kill a jackrabbit with a rock but wasn’t able to get close enough for a successful throw. Towards mid-afternoon, he happened across a small encampment of naked, impoverished Indians, huddled in a ravine. His hunger overcame his wariness, but the wary Indians appeared, by their gaunt state, to be even hungrier, and living hand to mouth. They offered him a dozen small grasshoppers in trade for his knife. He politely declined, departing hurriedly when the tribe’s leader seemed intent on taking the knife regardless.

  The next morning, having walked through the night, he found the wagon trail again and his father’s grave next to it. A note was impaled on the cross of sticks marking the shallow mound: “Thomas Hale – We searched for a day, but we must travell on as Winter may be fast upon us. Your father was a Good man. We hope that we may see You again. Fare well & may God watch over You.”

  Next to the grave they had left the crate of his father’s books along with, generously, a tin of pilot bread and a canteen of water. He couldn’t begrudge them for traveling on. The journey had been longer and more difficult than any of them had imagined, and there were still many weeks of severely challenging terrain ahead, including the treacherous and deadly Forty Mile Desert. Each day they lingered, more livestock and people would die of malnutrition, disease, thirst and exhaustion before they reached their destination. With each day lost, the likelihood of making it over the Sierras diminished. Early winter storms could trap a party in the mountains ahead, as had befallen the Reed and Donner party only a few years earlier, with many perishing and the survivors resorting to cannibalism to survive until spring. Thus the abandonment of the books: every non-essential pound carried across the desert and hauled over the Sierras was an unaffordable luxury. Measured haste was the order of the day. The party had been delayed too often already by wagon breakdowns, and precious days had been spent recovering cattle stolen by Indians. A week had been lost to a wrong turn that would have taken them to Oregon had they not backtracked.