What one enjoys most in this life is, I think, the absolute freedom; that and the great stretches of space around one are a constantly increasing delight. To look across these great sweeps of mountains, range after range, and see in the distance the silver line of the Pacific, and to feel the clean, pure wind in one’s face, is like a baptism of new life.
At first the strange bareness of these mountains almost wounds one’s eyes, and their true beauty is not recognised. But as one learns to know them better, their charm grows more and more striking, and I almost doubt if after a few years one would wish for any change in their bold bare lines. In the full midday sun they are not lovely, and in some moods one would call them almost ugly, so uncompromising are they in their grimness and bareness: but their time of triumph is when the changing lights of sunset begin, when they are flooded with such matchless colouring, so delicate and rich, that they seem positively unreal.
During the winter rains all the odd jobs of repairing are done: soldering, harness-cleaning and mending, painting of waggons or carts, and carpentering.
Most Americans are clever-handed, and can turn from one job to another with unusual facility. To see a man, who earns his living by driving a delivery waggon, turn to in his spare time and build a neat and comfortable addition to his house, an extra bedroom, and perhaps an enlargement of the sitting-room, with a nice bit of verandah out of this, and all well planned and well finished, is apt to knock the conceit out of the young fellow from home, who prides himself on being so “clever with his tools.”
Our first winter was a very dry one, to our great regret. The rainfall was much below the average and much below what was needed for the land. Less than seven inches fell during the whole season, and an average good fall is about fourteen inches. So the land was never thoroughly soaked, and what was a more anxious matter still, the storage of water “way back” in the mountains was too scant, and pretty certain to run short before the long dry season should be over. So, indeed, it proved, and we were greatly harassed, when the water company began to cut down our rations, leaving us barely enough to keep our young trees going; and certainly not enough to give them a chance of doing their best, however diligently the “cultivator” might be kept at work.
All that summer we were busy, tending the trees and adding further improvements to the ranch. When the second winter came, we were hopeful then all our anxieties about water would be set at rest by a good generous rainfall.
The dry season had extended unusually far into the winter months, no rain having fallen till December 5th, when we had a few small showers. Within three weeks of this, it seemed as though we were to get our desires to the full, for the rain came down in torrents.
The Silvero river, which was supposed to flow in the pretty valley below us, of which we got such a charming glimpse from our verandahs, had hitherto appeared to be a dry sandy stretch more like a rough country road than a river, and we had laughed at the very notion of a bridge being ever needed to cross its dangerous waters.
Wonderful tales of the miraculous possibilities of the land are of course told here to the credulous tenderfoot, and we did not feel inclined to believe our friends’ accounts of that very river’s deep and dangerous waters during some rainy winters.
We had to make an apology that second winter. For nine days the waters poured down in an almost solid sheet; and with hardly any cessation night or day. We were all anxious and excited over this storm; and constantly on the watch to see what would happen. At the end of the first twenty-four hours, we had rather a scare over our reservoir. The sudden inrush of water from the hill slopes around had filled it so quickly that when my husband went up in the driving rain to see what state it was in, he found, to his dismay, that the water had reached the very tops of the dam, and was just beginning to sweep over, making at once a deep and widening cut all along the lemon trees below.