[A NARROW-WAISTED MOTHER]
I first got acquainted with Mary when she was collecting tarantula holes. This appealed to me strongly. It was so much more interesting than collecting postmarks or even postage-stamps.
It is part of my work, the part which is really my play—to go out and look at things. To do the same, I found out, is Mary's play—which is, of course, her most serious employment. We easily got acquainted when we first met, and made an arrangement to go out and look at things, and collect some of them, together. So after Mary had shown me that collecting tarantula holes is really quite simple—although at first thought of it you may not think so—I proposed to her to come along and help me collect a few wasp holes. They are smaller of course than tarantula holes and do not make quite such a fine showing when you get them home, but they have several real advantages over the spider burrows, only one of which I need tell you now. This one is, that you can watch the wasps make their holes because they do it in the daytime, while you can't watch the tarantula make its hole because it does it at night. So Mary and I went together to the place of the wasps.
I ought to tell you right away that Mary and I live in California. This explains to you partly why we are so happy in our rambles, because for any one whose work or whose play it is to go out and look at things, California is a wonderfully good place to live in. In fact, I know of none better. But I should tell you more of where we live, because California is so many places at once, that is, so many different kinds of places, such as high mountains, burning deserts, great forests, fertile plains, salt lakes, blue ocean, low soft hills, wide level marshes, fragrant orchards, brilliant flower gardens, hot springs and volcanic cones, deep cañons and rushing rivers,—O, indeed, almost all the kinds of places that the physical geography tells about.
Mary and I live in a beautiful valley between two ranges of mountains and very near the marsh-lined shores of a great ocean bay. Over beyond one range of mountains is the ocean itself stretching blue and ripply all the way to China, while beyond the other range of mountains is a desert with jackrabbits and burrowing owls and cactuses. Not the worst—or best—sort of desert like that far south toward Mexico, but one that gets a little rain, and hence is called a "Land of Great Possibilities" by men who sell pieces of it now and then to people from Maine.
It is easy for us to get from the little town in which we live to several very good places for looking at things. The foothills and mountain sides with their forests and coverts and swift little brooks; the orchards and flower gardens and grain and grass fields; the wide flat marshes with their salt-grass and pickle-weed, their wide channels and pools, and finally the bay itself; all are near by and all are fine places for observing and collecting things.
When I met Mary first—the time she was collecting tarantula holes—we were on the gentle slopes of the lower foothills of the mountains. The big hairy tarantulas are very numerous there, although one rarely sees them because they mostly stay in their holes in daytime. There are tarantula hawks there too, enormous black and rusty-red wasps with wings stretching three inches from tip to tip. Mary and I saw one of these giant wasps swoop down on a big tarantula just as he came out of his hole one evening after sundown, and that was a battle to remember, and it had a very strange ending. The tarantula—but I must save that battle for another chapter all to itself. I must try and stick to the wasp holes in this one.
It was a day in September. This month in California is the last one of the long, rainless, sun-filled summer, and everywhere it is very dry and brown. The valley floors and foothill slopes lie thirsty and cracking under the ardent sun, and a thin cover of fine dust lies on all the leaves of the live-oak and eucalyptus trees. Everything out of doors is waiting for the first rain. The birds are still and the frogs all hidden away. The insects buzz about rather heavily and keep pretty well under cover. If one wants to see much lowly life it is necessary to go to the banks of the few persisting streams or lakes or to the shores of bay or ocean. So Mary and I left the dry foothill slopes and their many silk-lined holes with a big black hairy tarantula sitting quietly at the bottom of each, and took the gently dropping dusty road to the marshes.