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Show RIVER delicate as a Japanese watercolor. At night the lights of Monterey shimmered above the sea like a neon railroad. The deep forests and steep fields of Bonny Doon, the most rural of all the districts in the Santa Cruz Mountains, surrounded the peak. Enormous groves of second-growth redwood and Douglas fir filled the canyons and the level and rising ground was planted in ancient vineyards. The open meadows changed color with the seasons, filled in spring with a glory of wildflowers, in summer with a carpet of green, and in fall with gold. Despite the wide vista, there was hardly a sign of civilization except 1,834 feet below and three miles distant, where by the sea the smokestack of the cement plant in Davenport, an old whaling village, belched white smoke over the cliff-walled beaches and fields of Brussels sprouts. The shack on the very top of the peak was built about 1937 by a rich, alcoholic land baron named Staffler who had used it as a hunting lodge-that is, a place where he could get away from his wife (who was rumored to have been a veritable virago) and get as drunk as he pleased. I only saw the ruin of the original cabin one time: it was a beautiful piece of old-time carpentry, as well crafted as a Swiss music box and stout as a stagecoach. It had one eight-by-fourteen foot room that was surrounded on all sides by a wide, roofed-over porch. The cabin was built out of heart of redwood boards and shingles that had been hauled up a narrow trail to the top of the mountain on muleback. The cabin was truly a room with a view. In the late thirties a tall, ruddy, razor-thin drifter with bold Indian features and an egg-bald head wandered into Bonny Doon. His unlikely name was Frank H. "Tex" Zoarke. He worked as a gardener and handy-man for the Startlers, and he and the old man became fast friends. Staffler eventually made Tex caretaker of -120- |