Two Hours East
David Sumner
The situation of paradise is cut off from the habitable world by mountains or seas, or by some torrid region, which cannot be crossed. People who have written about topography make no mention of it. Thomas Aquinas
Know then, that on the right hand of the Indies, there is an island called California, very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise, and the people were of strong and hardy bodies, of ardent courage and great force. Their island was the strongest in the world, with its steep cliffs and rocky shores. Their armaments were all of gold, and so was the harness of the wild beasts which they tamed and rode. For in the whole island there was no metal but gold. Garci Ordonez de Montalvo
You are welcome To reprint/publish this Essay. Please remit your standard payment to me at 656 Madison Ave N, BI, WA 98110
Copyright 2008 David Sumner dbsumner@gmail.com
Mackerel sky tonight. A vee of dark birds passes thin clouds under the moon. I’m tired but I’ve been drinking coffee, so I cannot sleep. No sounds disturb the click of branches in the sycamore. No headlights pass up the road to Jacinto. As I drove the coast this morning, the air was filled with storm. White caps opened in the sea and spray blew off the tops of waves breaking. A bear on a white flag gusted with the motion of the trees at Torrey Pines Light where the beach was littered with red bricks and twisted lobster traps. Kelp and small fish snapped and washed with round stones onto the beach. Over the outer waters, storm clouds rose in the silence, bending across the western sky. Slanting rain below. A crow would fly one hundred miles. I drove for three hours. Ten miles outside Jacinto, I stopped the car and walked over broken ground where tractors and disks had turned in late summer toward an old farm set well off the road. As the storm front dragged lines of rain out of the west, the first heavy drops struck the road, drawing fine silt and the smell of soil into the air. These are the fields, in these same remnants of light that I crossed as a boy on my way home from school, most days with my friend Richard. We threw bottles
against the standpipes, tossed sticks into shale-colored grain fields and passed the thousands of conversations of childish matters. Who could be better than Sandy Koufax? I hope the riots don’t come to Jacinto. Why is your book cover so worn out? One mile farther, a cellar full of bent weeds. No walls standing.
The farmhouse stands down a dirt road, among a tangle of neglected trees. Old as the farthest groves in the valley. For every five rings on the trunks of our groves, my grandfather took cans of whitewash, ladders and rollers out, spread his tarps under the sky and busied himself for two days laying a coat of paint on the thick adobe walls. In passing years, the summer heat has baked a dusty opalescence into the layers of paint. Beneath the white glaze a shine rises in pale rainbow colors like the inside of an abalone shell. Sun slanting into the valley on the ends of the day casts purple-edged shadows along quiet walls. The inner walls reflect the same stark white that seems to change ink on a page to green if you’ve been reading long enough. The floors in every room are bared to the wood. Most of the furniture has been moved out of the dinning hall and meeting room. In each bedroom there are identical rough hewn, mission style beds, dressers and desks. Shelves contain various relics left by cousins or whoever has been by in the guest rooms. Most of the paintings have been removed. The walls are blank. The largest bedroom, last occupied by my parents, is still lined with overfull bookshelves and furnished with the rolltop desk that belonged to grandfather. Over the kitchen sink hangs a crucifix made from two eucalyptus branches. There are still plenty of cooking tools in the kitchen cabinets. The old adobe house rambles around a broad U – shape that nearly encircles a patio. Inside the thick walls of the house are terra cotta tiled hallways leading down corridors of cool rooms. These bedrooms are vestiges of larger families and times when seasonal visitors used to help out during harvests.
The farm was a magical place on which to be a kid. In my return to the house, I have been reunited with more than papers and records. I found my pond boat tilted away in the tack room of the old barn. When I was a boy, I used to sprawl across an Eams chair and read hours into the night. I read sea stories, sailing directions, and the usual children’s adventure stories associated with the time. Later, I kid myself, my reading became more sophisticated.
The grounds are overgrown and pocked by whitewashed stones which once outlined walkways or stopped cars before the garden. On the north side, a brilliant purple bougainvillea splashes up the trellised wall. Eucalyptus windbreaks still run along the east and west property lines between the road and the fields. Farther on, our acres of groves roll in patchwork up over the first arcs of the foothills. Although emptied of so much, the house retains a sense about it of peace and reassurance. Down dirt road and away, it has always waited for family and friends, now spread out across the world, to pass through for a few days rest and reorientation. There is no TV station to watch, nor radio station to find on the dial, so we’ve always read a lot in this house. As you’ll see, our family tends to navigate through libraries. Father once summed up his life as “places and pages.” I’m the same. Our family has sailed California waters for generations, yet we’ve always lived in the coastal hills and driven to the various harbors. The family - cousins, aunts, uncles extending out to trusted friends - can rely on the farm. No matter how far we go on our various misadventures at sea and abroad, everyone is always welcome to return. Knowing that this refuge is always here to catch us when we fall is a great reassurance. Of course, once we return, there is no guarantee that we will be entertained. There very little of what most people would now consider “to do” here. The cupboards are stocked with canned goods and if the gardens are tended, they and the groves yield plenty of fresh food. For as long as they could, my grandfather and grandmother kept the farm up. They maintained the house and gardens and left most of the bedrooms simply made up, sparsely furnished and waiting for us. As you know, they passed away years ago. A caretaker has been coming by the place once a week or so, but the house had been vacant for several months when I first came back.
I found a water glass on one window sill, threw a bleached dry rind out of it then filled the glass to wash the dust out of the sink. The faucets haven’t been replaced. Simply oversized brass gate valves salvaged from through-hull fittings of a wrecked trawler. Water came out just the same and washed the dust down cracked porcelain. Out the window over the sink, I can see the bones of my old tree house are still in the elm tree. Mother must have asked father to build it there so that they could check on me from the house. Rain, bugs and wind have ravaged it now, but there was a time when it served as my refuge and a stage for imaginary voyages across the green fields. The platform was replete with various old hardcover books about buccaneers, some toy sloops and pond boats, plastic coconut palms off a birthday cake and a child’s spyglass. As is not uncommon for children I suppose, I lived in two worlds. In one, I rode to school on the early bus past acres and acres of crops and groves; in the other I rode to the sea in my father’s battered pickup with the back full of sail bags, lines, a well stocked ice chest and box of groceries.