A narrow trail then, but, even then, to him it was broad in
its potential significance of the dawn of Grace upon the mountain shores
of Heaven's lost garden, California.
Not far from one iron-posted bell in the valley, El Camino Real falters,
to find, eventually, a lazy way round the low foothills, as though
reluctant to lift its winding length over the sharp pitch of the Canajo
Pass, beyond.
Near this lone bell another road, an offspring of old El Camino Real,
runs quickly from its gray and patient sire. Branching south in hurried
turns and multiple windings it climbs the rolling hills, ever dodging
the rude-piled masses of rock, with scattered brush between, but forever
aspiring courageously through the mountain sage and sunshine toward its
ultimate green rest in the shadowy hills.
In the sweet sage is the drone of bees, like the hum of a far city. The
thinning, acrid air is tinged with the faint fragrance of sunburnt
shrubs and grasses.
With the sinuous avoidings of a baffled snake the road turns and turns
upon itself until its earlier promise of high adventuring seems
doubtful. As often as not it climbs a semi-barren dun stretch of
sunbaked earth dotted with stubby cacti--passes these dwarfed
grotesques, and attempts the narrowing crest of the canon-wall, to swing
abruptly back to the cacti again, gaining but little in its upward
trend.
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