It is now the dead of winter.  One winter storm follows another, even here in the desert.  Heavier desert rain this season is a good harbinger for a prolific, early wildflower season.  Just a few weeks ago we saw lush, green growth and the bright red flowers of the Ocotillo in Hellhole Canyon.

There is already a hummingbird nest with two eggs in our California Bay Tree just outside our den window.  We are in the middle of the third rain and windstorm this week and rain is expected through Saturday.

Each morning we peer outside our window to see if the nest survived the storms and each day we are amazed that the brave and dedicated mother is still there, hunkered down over her eggs.

During my last visit to Marshal South’s home, Yaquitepec, on Ghost Mountain, I thought about the bravery of Marshal South and his wife, Tanya, in choosing this desolate site for their experiment in desert primitive living and in raising a family here.

I contemplated about their experiences as recorded by Marshal South in his over 102 articles and poems written for Desert Magazine from 1939 to 1948.*

At one point the South’s windup kitchen clock failed and I was mesmerized by Marshal’s story of the making of his sundial and his reflections on time, as written in his Desert Diary 10 — October at Yaquitepec:

“So again, in peace, with neither tick nor tock time marches on at Yaquitepec…”  (Allow time to slow as you savor reading this.)

“and the unhurried, silent shadow moves round and round on the chisel-marked granite block that stands on the terrace.”

“… It wasn’t originally intended to be a sundial.  In the beginning it was part of a crude homemade grain mill.  But another mill superseded it and in the course of time the upper millstone of the discarded apparatus was broken.  Then one day the old clock folded its hands at 4:33 and we were without the time.  Which didn’t matter much, for ‘time’ is an illusion anyway.  But there is a sort of habit to the counting of it.  So I resurrected the nether millstone with its central iron pin — which was a long iron bolt cemented into a hole in the stone — and set forth to make a sundial.”

“… It was winter when I made the sundial and I still have chilly recollections of ’shooting’ the North Star through the old gun barrel, lashed to a post…”  “There are teeth-chattering memories too of leveling and wedging and sighting under the chill starlight as I arranged the granite block on a big boulder pedestal in the exact position necessary…”

“… Our sundial works.  Sometimes it proves, when checked against the haughty mechanism of expensive visiting watches, to be fifteen minutes or so out.  But who would worry about a little thing like 15 minutes’ error?  Certainly not here on Ghost Mountain, where there are no ‘limiteds’ to catch and where the golden sheen of the sun wraps the desert distances in a robe of glow…”

“… and dim mystery that is timeless.”

“What is Time, anyway?”*

Great thinkers have contemplated about time over the ages.  (See video of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity illustrated here.)

This is food for thought and, with a little champagne (and appropriate music), I’ll muse on and contemplate the passages of time and other mysteries of life and the universe.

*(All 102 articles and poems written by Marshal South for Desert Magazine from 1939 to 1948 can be read in Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles: An Experiment in Primitive Living, 2005, Edited and with a Foreword by Diana Lindsay and Introduction by Rider and Lucile South, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, CA.)

Bert and I have each been here before, but never at night.  So we packed our gear and took a late afternoon hike on New Year’s Day up Ghost Mountain in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park to experience and photograph Yaquitepec and the night sky.

Yaquitepec is the name Marshal South (poet, author and artist) gave to his adobe house that he built atop Ghost Mountain, where he and his family lived from 1930 to 1947 in an experiment in primitive living.  Some consider Marshal and his wife, Tanya, as the original hippie family.  It was the time of the Great Depression of the 1930s, when people were without money, jobs and houses and went back to the land to survive, some, including Marshal and Tanya, by homesteading.

Years earlier they enjoyed camping trips to this area and loved the peaceful beauty of this desert wilderness, which enabled them to be creative in their writings after establishing a home here.  Marshal wrote articles for Desert Magazine and monthly drove his 1929 Model A Ford 14 miles to the town of Julian to pick up mail and supplies.  Some in Julian considered him an outcast because of his lifestyle.  Even though he painted a frieze for the Julian library, he was buried in the Julian Cemetery in an unmarked grave in 1948 (it is now marked with a headstone placed by his son Rider in 2005).

Along the way, Bert photographed this Agave plant, called Mescal by Marshal, who used it as a food and fuel source, among other things.

We started photographing the deteriorating ruins under increasingly cloudy skies.

After four prior hikes up here, I finally found and photographed the Souths’ kiln where they fired their pottery.

It is located about 500 feet east of the house and was built from the surrounding granite rocks.

Although it was mostly cloudy, the night sky had pockets of clearing, revealing stars.  Bert lit up the opposite side of this structure with a strobe light and took the image seen in his article, “At Yaquitepec, Atop Ghost Mountain in Anza Borrego, January of 1940 Was a Very Good Year“.  Afterward, he reviewed his photos (below).  Tall agave stalks are seen against the night sky lit up by El Centro, fifty miles away and the largest U.S. city to lie entirely below sea level.

Bert’s headlamp lit up the yard in front of Yaquitepec.

Earlier during the magnificent sunset, I reflected on the ongoing return of Yaquitepec to the earth and, like Marshal, I celebrated the life, beauty and spirit of this special place.

Marshal wrote in his first article for Desert Magazine, “Desert Diary 1 - January at Yaquitepec”, “And New Year is somehow a joyous finale of the glad season.  A wind-up and a beginning.  And it doesn’t matter much whether the wind is yelling down from the glittering, white-capped summits of the Laguna range and chasing snowflakes like clouds of ghostly moths across the bleak granite rocks of our mountain crest or whether the desert sun spreads a summer-like sparkle over all the stretching leagues of wilderness.  New Year’s day is a happy day just the same.”

And, all in all, for Bert and I, New Year’s Day at Yaquitepec was a happy day and a great way to start the new year.

(All 102 articles and poems written by Marshal South for Desert Magazine from 1939 to 1948 can be read in Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles: An Experiment in Primitive Living, 2005, Edited and with a Foreword by Diana Lindsay and Introduction by Rider and Lucile South, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, CA.)

Also see Diana Lindsay’s website, MarshalSouth.com, for additional information, articles, images and links.

And see the video trailer of John McDonald’s 76-minute documentary, The Ghost Mountain Experiment.

Surf’s up and cool ocean breezes are zipping up and over our South Carlsbad State Beach bluff campsite where we enjoyed a break from the desert heat. We camped for four nights on the edge of a 3-mile long bluff, where we were bathed in the continuous sounds of the wind and surf. Seagulls sailed by, both inside and outside the trailer.

Seagulls by John Perry

The area of Carlsbad was once inhabited by the Luiseno Native Americans who had a village near the Agua Hedionda Lagoon which was a resting place for Gaspar de Portola and Father Juan Crespi on their expedition up the coast in 1769 to establish outposts and missions for Spain. In 1883 the Santa Fe Railroad passed near here and land was opened to homesteaders and real estate speculators, including John Frazier who tapped an artesian spring yielding mineral water which was thought to be curative and likened to the old Bohemian spa of Karlsbad (in Czechoslovakia).

Five miles north of Carlsbad is Oceanside, where Marshal South, once known as Oceanside’s Poet Laureate, met his wife-to-be, Tanya, whose parents were orthodox Jews from the Russian Ukraine and emigrated to New York in 1906. See an image of Marshal and Tanya’s “honeymoon accommodations” while camping on an Oceanside beach in 1923.

Marshal South probably would have found our trailer accommodations interesting even though he apparently had no desire to use or generate electricity at Yaquitepec. Here at South Carlsbad State Beach we are self-contained and, with our two solar panels, we generate more electricity than we use during the day, even through the marine layer. Typically by late morning each day our AGM batteries are 100 percent at 13.5 volts.

If we did a lot of this coastal camping, a portable wind turbine could possibly take advantage of the almost constant ocean breeze.

We found that this South Carlsbad bluff is really the turf of the California Ground Squirrel.

 Their accommodations are underground burrows on the other side of the fence and their favorite activities are surveying the campers and obtaining campers’ food and water. Bungee cords were used to secure outdoor items that contained food or other items of interest.

A family of nearby squirrels paused for a moment and seemed mesmerized by Larry’s ukulele playing and singing.

 More beautiful sunsets and summer breezin’ are just around the corner.

We celebrated Earth Day by returning to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park for a five-night stay.  We arrived in warmer than usual temperatures for this time of year, which gave us a chance to see how well we could keep comfortable if we camped in the desert later in the season. We had full hook-ups at Borrego Palm Canyon Campground and used our Safari’s air conditioner extensively for the first time. This and other strategies enabled us to keep relatively comfortable, even when the outside temperature was 100 degrees.

Our desert heat is usually a dry heat that I tolerate rather well. I sat under one of our three trailer awnings (which also help to keep the trailer cool when the wind is not gusting) and sipped on a cool one.

Marshal South described desert heat in his article, DESERT DIARY  7, July at Yaquitepec, (August 1940 issue of Desert Magazine):

              Heat! And the distant phantoms of mirage. Desert summer is with us now and Yaquitepec shimmers in the heat of a midday glare that is thirstily metallic… Nowhere but in the desert, and in summer, can you see such magnificent cloud effects as those which tower into the hard, turquoise sky above the heat-dancing wastelands.

(All 102 articles and poems written by Marshal South for Desert Magazine from 1939 to 1948 can be read in Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles: An Experiment in Primitive Living, 2005, Edited and with a Foreword by Diana Lindsay and Introduction by Rider and Lucile South, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, CA.)

Upon arrival, the first item that I connected was shore power so that we could start running the air conditioner. Our original 30-amp power cord that came with the trailer was starting to pull loose at the male connector end. We recently replaced it with with a heavier duty Marinco 30 Amp Right Angle Locking RV Cord Set.

On an earlier camping trip here we noticed that the campground’s water pressure was overcoming our water pump’s check valve and the fresh water tank filled and water was seen trickling out of the overflow drain on the side of the trailer.  We found, that by hooking up a water regulator gauge, the incoming water pressure could be monitored and adjusted to prevent this from happening.

 Once we were hooked up to shore power, we were pleased that our new 3-stage Xantrex  XADC 60A Converter/Charger worked perfectly and quietly. (Our previous two Parallax converters failed). See how I installed it: “Parallax Converter Replacement with Xantrex“, on Airforums.com.

 The desert heat prompted us to convert the trailer into a comfortable cave.

We closed the curtains, blinds and Vista View window covers. Larry made covers for our two Fan-Tastic Fans from Reflectix insulation that he cut to size and then sewed the edges together. (Our forward Fan-Tastic Fan has a reversible switch, so we have the option of pulling in cool night air at one end of the trailer and blowing it out the rear end, if we didn’t want to use the air conditioner or if we were boondocking.)

Our cave was brightened by new Warm-White LEDs that Larry installed. They use less energy and run cooler. He replaced the ceiling, over-the-stove and reading lights with LED lights (G4-WHP10-D, T10-PCB-WHP9, and G4-WHP15-T respectively) that are now available in a pleasant warm-white light from Super Bright LEDs, Inc.  See details and photos of his installation in his post, “LED ceiling lights“, on Airforums.com.

 Those hot-to-touch Halogen reading lights now feel only slightly warm with the Warm-White LEDs, which is very much appreciated when camping in the desert heat, and as a bonus, colors look truer.

More images and notes about our LEDs appear in this Airforums post.

 Earth Day was brightened in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park not only by the blazing sun, but also by the flowering Palo Verde tree, also called “lluvia de oro”, which is Spanish for “shower of gold”…

Reminding us that the real desert heat is still to come, and hopefully, with more gorgeous blue skies.

Yaquitepec (pronounced YAKeete-PECK and coined by Marshal South from “Yaqui”, the fierce freedom-loving Indians of Sonora, Mexico, and “tepec” referring to the hill) was Marshal South and family’s home from 1930 to 1946 on an obscure ridge they named Ghost Mountain, owned by the Bureau of Land Management before it became part of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.  Yaquitepec, where Marshal and family lived close to nature in an experiment in primitive living, was bathed in spring flowers earlier this month.

A beavertail cactus greeted us as we approached Yaquitepec after trekking up the 1 mile trail.

Marshal South described a spring scene at Yaquitepec in his article, Desert Home 1, in the May 1941 issue of Desert Magazine:

The squaw-tea [Mormon tea or ephedra] bush in front of the house is sprinkled thickly with clustering chrome-yellow blossoms; and down by the yuccas the white and yellow headings of my tiny desert daisy bushes nod beside the budding beavertail cactus. The barrel cacti too are crowned with flower circlets and the lone creosote bush by the great rock is already dressed in its bright new covering of varnished green leaves and is sprinkled with yellow blossoms. New pink and cream heads nod on the buckwheat. The whole world of desert growth throbs to spring.

(Note: all 102 articles and poems written by Marshal South for Desert Magazine from 1939 to 1948 can be read in Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles: An Experiment in Primitive Living, 2005, Edited and with a Foreword by Diana Lindsay and Introduction by Rider and Lucile South, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, CA.)

Ephedra funerea, Mormon tea bush, has tiny leaves and most of the photosynthesis takes place in its green jointed stems. Most Native Americans in the Southwest and some of the Mormon pioneers brewed or boiled the Ephedra stems to make a tea that was considered refreshing and therapeutic.  Marshal’s ephedra, which he called squaw-tea, was just a few feet from his front door.

Encelia farinosa,  or Brittlebush, is prolific at Yaquitepec, and helps to soften the look of its dump of rusting cans a ways down on the southeast side.  (Marshal drove his 1929 Model A Ford 14 miles monthly up the Banner Grade to the nearest town, Julian, where he mailed in his articles to Desert Magazine, bought gasoline, and brought back library books, goods and supplies, including canned goods.)

Spring also brings warmer nights to Yaquitepec. Marshal South described one such night in his article, Desert Refuge 9, in the April 1942 issue of Desert Magazine:

Last night was warm and at midnight I went out to open another shutter of our screened sleeping porch… I did not at once go back into the house. Instead I sat down on the upper of the two rock steps that lead past the cisterns to where the woodpile is. Upon my bare body the chill of the night air struck with a tingling, electric glow that was almost warmth.

 Far off, through a mist-rift above the shadowy ridges, the North Star gleamed. Almost I seemed to hear the deep, measured breathing of the earth…

 The night air was like a garment of peace, and the overhead arch of the desert stars, appearing and disappearing through rifts in the canopy of haze, was a glorious procession of the Heavenly Hosts, streaming forward triumphantly across the fields of Paradise… One gets very close to the heart of things, sometimes, in the desert silence.

(All 102 articles and poems written by Marshal South for Desert Magazine from 1939 to 1948 can be read in Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles: An Experiment in Primitive Living, 2005, Edited and with a Foreword by Diana Lindsay and Introduction by Rider and Lucile South, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, CA.)

Plans were already in place for us to spend four nights just below Ghost Mountain, so when Rich L. and family arrived in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park with their friends Adam and Susan earlier in the week we were poised to go on a joint hike with them and celebrate their last full day in the desert with a sumptuous feast prepared by Larry.  We had already agreed on a hike to see the pictographs near Ghost Mountain and I was especially interested in seeing the nearby morteros for the first time. Adam and Susan had recently viewed the short film, Ghost Mountain - An Experiment in Primitive Living, shown in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park’s Visitors’ Center, and they were interested in hiking up to see Marshal South’s former home site, Yaquitepec, on Ghost Mountain. So we decided to do all three hikes in one afternoon.

(Pictured above are Adam, Susan, Emma, Rich and Eleanor)

Zoe the cat enjoyed viewing the sites from the vantage point of Emma’s day bag while both Rich and Emma kept their eyes open for any curiosities along the trail.

Bright yellow flower mounds of  Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa) are prolific here at Yaquitepec right now. (The Laguna Mountains are seen along with the Mason Valley below.)

The Creosote Bush (Larrea tridentata) and the Brittlebush brighten Marshal South’s dissolving adobe ruins.

Desert Agave (Agave deserti) is also very abundant here.  Standing below are two Agave flower stalks.  Native peoples (as illustrated in Marshal South’s frieze in the former Julian Library) once roasted young agave stalks in rock-lined roasting pits for two days which resulted in a sweet, molasses-flavored agave which was consumed.

Marshal South wrote in his article, Desert Refuge 35, in the June 1944 issue of Desert Magazine:

Mescal roasting is a family affair. Tanya and I find and bring in the sprouting plants that are ready for the baking.  Rider helps dig the pit and fetches stones to line it.  Rudyard and Victoria trot hither and thither, lugging in fuel…  you leave your mescals cooking in their primitive oven for two days… Take a knife or a hatchet and carefully trim off the outer crusting, and the prize lies before you.  Brown and golden and rich!

(All 102 articles and poems written by Marshal South for Desert Magazine from 1939 to 1948 can be read in Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles: An Experiment in Primitive Living, 2005, Edited and with a Foreword by Diana Lindsay and Introduction by Rider and Lucile South, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, CA.)

After hiking the mile back down to Rich’s Armada, we piled back in and continued down a sandy road to our next stop, Morteros Trail.  This .25 mile walk leads to an area where Native Kumeyaay women used rock pestles to pound seeds in the bedrock mortar (mortero).

Along the way we spotted numerous lizards of various colors.  Emma wanted to see a large one so she performed her “Homage to the colored lizard” by repeated bowing with arms outstretched.

We then climbed back into the Armada and continued down the road to our next and final hike of one mile into Smuggler Canyon to see the pictographs.  Emma’s homage worked because the next lizard that we saw was the largest one of the day.

We found the rock art pictographs (pictures with applied color, as contrasted with petroglyphs which have pictures etched into rock) on a prominent boulder.  Manfred Knack says in his The Forgotten Artist - Indians of Anza-Borrego and Their Rock Art, 1968, Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association, this rock art may have been associated with girls initiation ceremonies… The diamond chain or “rattlesnake” may have represented a messenger from the god Chinigehinish (or Chinigchinix), who would punish those who disobey his divine laws… Paintings at the conclusion of the rites of passage reaffirmed the final lessons of the ceremonies.

So after a total of 4.5 miles of hiking…

We were ready to find out what Larry had been preparing back at camp just southeast of Yaquitepec.

In Larry’s own words: “Wednesday afternoon involved preparing dinner while Bill went hiking with our friends. A majority of that time was used to assemble the vegetarian pot stickers and cook the falafels. We found that another picnic table had been moved to our campsite. We aligned them end-to-end and set out a Mexican serape as a table cloth and hung 2 Chinese bamboo flutes with red tassels, which danced in the wind, on the branches of the grove of picturesque mesquite trees. This made for a festive ambiance with plenty of seating and a buffet table for serving. The weather was beautiful with mild breezes.

I had fixings out for salad and/or pita sandwiches, which included falafels, tomatoes, onion, pepperoncini, hummus, tahini, pita wedges, vegetarian pot stickers (which were a favorite), lemonade, poppy seed short bread cookies, and celery sticks. Allowing guests to pick and choose their favorite eats always makes for a successful meal. Our guests (Rich, Eleanor, Emma, Adam and Susan) brought a bottle of wine and a delicious Julian apple pie topped with a crispy streusel topping.”

Larry enjoys researching and preparing food, recipes, and menus that are inclusive and compatible with guests’ dietary limitations.

I enjoyed the food and company so much that I forgot to take out our camera to capture the moment.  Perhaps we can entice the Man In The Maze to post some of his shots of this dinner gathering in his next post.

As I begin to write this at our home base in San Diego, it is 58 degrees, breezy with on-and-off sprinkles.  NOAA weather tells me that in our nearby Anza-Borrego Desert community of Borrego Springs, it is 64 degrees with isolated showers and wind speed of 29 mph, with gusts up to 60 mph.  A fast-moving low pressure system is moving through the area.  Last month we camped in the desert near Ghost Mountain, where poet, author, and artist Marshal South and his family set up a home they called Yaquitepec for over 15 years pursuing a primitive and natural lifestyle.  While we were there we experienced firsthand how quickly showers and wind can sweep through the area.

Marshal South wrote in his article, “Desert Diary 2 - February at Yaquitepec”, in the March 1940 issue of Desert Magazine:

                              There is nothing “regular” about the desert.  Uncertainty is its keynote and its eternal fascination…  Against a backdrop of silver showers that screened the footslopes of the Laguna range the desert flashed up in dazzling brilliance.  And over all, like a jeweled scimitar, its hilt in the desert and its point upon the summit of Granite Mountain, a mighty rainbow arched the sky.  It will be will be a warm and brilliant day today.  Tomorrow there may be snow.  Quien sabe!  This is the desert.

(All 102 articles and poems written by Marshal South for Desert Magazine from 1939 to 1948 can be read in Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles: An Experiment in Primitive Living, 2005, Edited and with a Foreword by Diana Lindsay and Introduction by Rider and Lucile South, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, CA.)

We are preparing for our return to the desert and look upon today’s rain as a blessing and a promise of more desert flowers to come.  Marshal South wrote in his article, “Desert Refuge 56″, of the March 1946 issue of Desert Magazine:

                   But storms bring with them their ultimate reward.  For beneath every bush and in the lee of every sheltering stone, new green life is pushing up through the desert soil.  The steady drip of the rains has wakened seeds from slumber.

Wild Heliotrope (above)

Below is a field of Desert Sunflowers and Desert Sand-Verbena of Henderson Canyon near Borrego Springs.

As I finish writing this the sky is now very blue and the trees are bending in the wind.  NOAA tells me that the wind is kicking up dust in Tucson, Arizona.  We look forward to returning to the fascinating and colorful desert.

In the meantime, take a look at Wildflowers Of The Southwest, presented by NPR.

It might be snowing where you are, but it’s spring wildflowers in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California.  That’s how I started a similar post almost exactly one year ago when Larry and I rendezvoused with Rich Charpentier and Sadira for a celebration of the beginning of the wildflower season and the turning point in Rich’s fortune.  Two years ago Rich visited this area in Borrego Springs and immediately felt happy.  From here he went on to find his happy home base in Prescott, Arizona and establish his very successful career, R.L. Charpentier Photography, and gallery.

Last Saturday we received a report from the Anza-Borrego Foundation and Institute that the desert is blooming.  We were not disappointed, even our campsite was surrounded with wildflowers.

The blooms are just beginning and should be prolific this year due to our recent rain.

Since dogs are not allowed on the trails, we took turns going with Rich on day hikes.  Larry and Rich hiked up Palm Canyon with its many displays of the Brittlebush (big grayish-green dome-shaped bush covered with bright yellow flowers on thin stalks) and the Pink Sand Verbena.  Then on the same day, I joined Rich in his Titan on a drive to Ghost Mountain where we hiked one mile to see the pictographs in Smuggler Canyon.

Along the way Rich discovered a lizard on a rock.  And the lizard contemplated its options.

Rich came well equipped with two cameras, an assortment of lens, tripod and waterproof bag.  Rich is gaining quite a reputation for his spectacular HDR images.

We found the pictographs and my images will appear in my next post, along with more about Marshal South’s and his son’s visit here when they lived at nearby Yaquitepec.

The brief report comes to you from the field, as it did one year ago, complements of Rich’s WI-FI connection.

More desert trails and mysteries will continue after my next post, Desert blooms 2009.

Punxsutawney Phil (1) may have seen his shadow, but here in San Diego we see harbingers of spring.  Even before we departed for the Ghost Mountain area in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, our lemon tree in our front yard was laden with lemons, which we shared with writer and photographer, Bert Gildart, who was out in Anza-Borrego photographing nesting hummingbirds.

Just before leaving for the desert we spotted a mother hummingbird sitting in her nest in our lemon tree.

Yesterday, I took these photos of our two baby hummingbirds:

 Marshal South also recorded harbingers of spring and wrote in his Desert Diary 3, April 1940 issue of Desert Magazine, “March at Yaquitepec”:

    Our personal Herald of spring has already made his call at Yaquitepec. No, not the traditional lion who is supposed to usher in the month of gales. Our March announcer is a Western Robin. He comes every year. We like to think that it is the same bird - and probably it is, for we have never seen more than the one each year. Oddly he seems out of place here in the desert among the frowning rocks and the cholla. But he has all the friendliness of the robin family.(2)

Marshal South and family created a home on Ghost Mountain and lived out an experiment in primitive living for about 17 years.  Poet, author, and artist Marshal South named his house and home Yaquitepec which comes from “Yaqui“, the freedom-loving Indians of Sonora, Mexico, and “tepec“, the classical Nahuatl (Aztec) word, meaning “on a hill; on a mountain”.  Yaqui sacred tradition centers around nature as a living university where spirits are acknowledged with love and respect as the living beings that they are.

All 102 articles and poems written by Marshal South for Desert Magazine from 1939 to 1948 can be read in Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles: An Experiment in Primitive Living, 2005, Edited and with a Foreword by Diana Lindsay and Introduction by Rider and Lucile South, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, CA.  In the Forward, Diana Lindsay wrote:

  South wrote with a lyric quality, painting word pictures as only a poet or artist could. He wrote with passion about the desert - its silence, beauty, and natural history; its healthful qualities; its early inhabitants and their lifestyle.(2)

 Diana Lindsay has been a desert naturalist for over 25 years. The Anza-Borrego Desert became the subject of her master’s thesis from San Diego State University, which was subsequently published as Our Historic Desert by Copley Books in 1973. Diana has also written and edited several additional books including: Anza-Borrego A to Z: People, Places, and Things; Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles; and The Anza-Borrego Desert Region (which comes with a separate folded map). I have and treasure all four books and find them to be very informative and useful. Diana has served over 18 years on the board of the Anza-Borrego Foundation and Institute and owns Sunbelt Publications. Diana has given me permission to insert brief quotations from her book, Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles, in my ongoing articles here, which will help me to illustrate how one can fall in love with the desert, its beauty and natural history. For example, in Marshal South’s own words (after the title page of the above book):

  The Desert!  Either you will love it or you will hate it.  If you hate it you will fly from it and never wish to see its face again.  If you love it, it will hold you and draw you as will no other land on earth.(2)

  Diana wishes you to know that there is a new website currently under construction, which will be hopefully open in a few weeks: www.marshalsouth.com where she will be offering published and unpublished works by Marshal and Tanya South in addition to many unpublished photos of the family and Marshal’s artwork. Diana will also have a blog to carry on conversations about the Souths.

Meanwhile, back at our homestead in San Diego, more harbingers of spring are appearing such as the Cattleya:

 Just before our last trip to the desert, we planted a bare root Saturn Peach.  The peach is native to China.

 This week it bloomed:

 We toast to our 38th Anniversary… and to the harbingers of spring:

 Some of the symbolic images on the table include two (Chinese lucky number) whole fish (abundance, prosperity, long life), two flying seagulls and the red dragon.

Notes:

1. Punxsutawny Phil is a groundhog resident of Punxsutawny, Pennsylvania.

2. Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles: An Experiment in Primitive Living, 2005, Edited and with a Foreword by Diana Lindsay and Introduction by Rider and Lucile South, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, CA.

Marshal South’s frieze in the former Julian Library also depicts a time when the Kumeyaay Indians lived in an oasis just south of Ghost Mountain.  It is supplied with water draining down from the nearby Laguna and Sawtooth Mountains. Plants are plentiful in this mesquite-shaded area, including edible plants such as Agave and Yucca.

The outbreak of the war with Mexico in 1846 and the California Gold Rush (1848-1852) brought increased traffic, including emigrant caravans through this area.

The name for this area is Vallecito, Spanish for “little valley”, and has been credited to Lt. Pedro Fages, who came searching for deserters from the San Diego Presidio in 1772. (1)  The first road for wheeled vehicles was built here by the Mormon Battalion on their way to San Diego in 1847. (2)  In the early 1850’s a stage station was constructed using sod from the nearby salt-grass cienega (3), which was used by the Jackass Mail, 1857-1859, and followed by the Butterfield Overland Stage.  Stagecoach attacks and holdups were not uncommon in the area.

There is a story of one stage holdup that resulted in a double-murder.  It is said that the leader of the gang of thieves, while riding a white horse, shot his companion to avoid dividing up the loot.  It is also said that sometimes the ghost of the white horse can be seen galloping by at midnight.  In the mid 1920’s Marshal South and his wife Tanya began taking camping trips to the desert.  They often stayed at Vallecito until Tanya reportedly saw the ghost of the white horse (4).

Vallecito Stage Station was reconstructed in 1934 and one time Marshal took his son, Rider, on a hike from their home, Yaquitepec, down Ghost Mountain to the Vallecito Stage Station. (5)

From Vallecito, Marshal could see the ridge on Ghost Mountain where his Yaquitepec is located, dotted with plants…

and depicted in his frieze in the Julian Library.

Marshal South’s last visit to Vallecito Stage Station was in 1948, the year he died of heart failure.  His picture at Vallecito can be seen here. (6)

After a full afternoon of following the trails and mysteries of the Marshal South story, Bert Gildart and I returned from Julian, the final resting spot and “last known address” of Marshal South and the location of his frieze just as rain clouds were pouring over the mountains.

It will take more than a candle to fully illuminate some of these mysteries.

Thank you, Bert for brightening our day and for getting excited about Marshal South’s story and our (Bill and Larry’s) story, as evidenced in your superb post, “Ghost Mountain or Brokeback Mountain? Maybe There Is No Choice“.

Notes (1.) page 350, (2.) page 351, (3.) page 352, Anza-Borrego A to Z: People, Places, and Things, Diana Lindsay, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, California, 2001

Notes (4.) page 19, (5.) page 51, (6.) page 36, Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles - An Experiment in Primitive Living, Edited with a forward by Diana Lindsay, Introduced by Rider and Lucile South, Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, California, 2005, ISBN: 0-932653-66-9