Orchards on the Edge

The San Gabriel Mountains, on their far side, have always had an edge-of-the-world quality for me. The jagged peaks and forested slopes look out over the Mojave Desert, a terrain that, for all its peculiar beauty, has always seemed eerie and desolate.

The foothills on the tramontane side also form another kind of boundary. They mark the path of the Mojave segment of the San Andreas Fault as it snakes across the desert at the foot of the mountains, from the Cajon Pass to the eastern reaches of the Tehachapi range.

My daughter and I visited this borderland last Sunday morning. We went with friends who invited us to join their annual pilgrimage to pick cherries in the Leona Valley. My wife, who is passionate about fruit, had to work, unfortunately, and was unable to go with us. Nevertheless, she left me with instructions. “Reach for the high fruit and the dark berries,” she told me. “They’re sweeter.”

My daughter (who just finished third grade) awoke early and eagerly Sunday – our friends’ youngest daughter is a classmate and one of her best pals. She could barely contain her impatience and excitement through breakfast and my careful application of sunscreen to her face.

Our friends swung by early and we were on the road under overcast skies by 7:30. I had the rare luxury of sitting in the passenger seat as my friend made his way through the Cahuenga Pass and the northeast San Fernando Valley on the Hollywood and Golden State Freeways. He is an excellent driver – alert, careful, moderate – and I felt relaxed as we moved briskly on the lightly trafficked roads.

At the Newhall Pass, we veered off the Golden State onto Highway 14, the Antelope Valley Freeway. I can remember driving through Canyon Country 25 years ago when it still seemed rural. Now the urbanization seemed to extend almost to Vasquez Rocks.

At least the overcast had faded and the sun was shining.

More sprawl awaited us on the far side of the Sierra Pelona grade as Palmdale and the Antelope Valley came into view. Palmdale had barely 12,000 residents in 1980, according to census data. By 2000, the population had grown to 116,000. Many residents work in the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles, traversing twice every day the 60 miles we had just come. Reportedly, rush hour on the freeway moving south out of Palmdale is in full swing by 5:00 a.m.

Sunday morning, however, the oncoming lanes were nearly empty. We dropped off the freeway at Palmdale’s southern edge, then headed west. Soon we began the ascent into the narrow confines of the Leona Valley.

The road ran parallel to the Amargosa Creek, which was still flowing well even though it was late spring. Joshua trees and creosote soon gave way to rolling oak savannas. The green on the pasturelands was fading, but had not yet disappeared. My daughter and her friend squealed in delight as we passed a small herd of bison in a fenced-in meadow.

I saw no signs of disturbance from the Ritter Ranch project, although news accounts had said construction was to have begun in April. The prospect has been roiling residents of the Leona Valley for more than a decade and a half now – 7,200 homes, a golf course and an equestrian center on 11,000 acres at the valley’s eastern doorstep.

Lawsuits filed in the name of the Leona Valley’s 2,000 residents ultimately failed to make headway. Hopes rose several times as successive developer partnerships stumbled into bankruptcy and the project ground to a halt. However, Ritter Ranch was resurrected yet again last year as a major development company picked up the property at auction. Groundbreaking took place two months ago.

For people living in the Leona Valley, the world “down below” would seem to be getting closer.

The morning of our visit, however, the bucolic peace did not seem greatly perturbed. We climbed further up into a landscape dotted by homes and orchards, then came to a crossroads. “This is a one-intersection town,” my friend said with a smile. He turned right, then left, and soon we were on a road that extended well down the scarp that forms the valley’s northern wall.

A number of homes with nearby orchards were visible on the undulating terrain ahead. Some of the houses were old, some looked new, but all were modest. The orchards, too, were small. I had the impression that most of the growers were “gentlemen farmers” or hobbyists and that the “pick your own” farms provided little more than a small supplemental income.

The grove we finally stopped at certainly had a family feel. A long driveway made a straight path up the face of the scarp, then veered off toward a modest home shaded by a stand of oaks. Nearby, the orchard, dense and dark green, clung to the slope. I estimated its size at about an acre and a half.

A friendly woman met us at a wooden fruit-and-vegetable stand at the base of the grove. She provided buckets and advice: “Your best bet is to start at the top of the orchard and work down,” she said. “Please take only the cherries and not the stems, because that will help ensure a good crop next year. And, please, we ask that you don’t get carried away with the sampling before you pay.”

(A handwritten sign on the fruit stand established the price -- $2.50 per pound.)

With the tutorial completed, my daughter and her friend ran up the hill as if just let loose for recess. The rest of us followed more sedately.

The sun was bright and the morning was getting quite warm, but the shade of the orchard was soothing. The cherry trees, with their long, leafy branches, reminded me a little of peach or apricot trees and the dark red of the berries against the deep green of the leaves was striking.

I went to work, remembering my wife’s admonition to reach high. I fumbled a little – I took some stems, a few cherries ended up on the ground – but soon developed a rhythm.

As I worked, I listened to the chatter around me. One family nearby chatted in what sounded like Tagalog. I have no idea what they were saying, but they sounded happy. Another picker under an adjacent tree was apparently a veteran Leona Valley visitor. He explained to his companion that altitude was critical. The valley was more than 3,000 feet above sea level, he said. That meant colder winters than one would find at most other arable spots in California. Sometimes it would even snow here. A cold winter and a warm spring were the keys to successful cherry cultivation, he said.

At that moment it was quite warm and a cold winter was something very hard to imagine. I stepped away from the trees for just a bit to rest my arms and give the others some room. Looking down the valley, I was again struck by how narrow it was. I think I knew the significance.

My friend’s wife stepped over to see how I was doing. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said, pointing down the valley.

“Yes, very beautiful. But also a little strange – did you know we’re right on top of the San Andreas Fault?”

“No,” she shrugged, “although I knew it was nearby.”

I regretted broaching the topic. I’m sometimes aware that I have a morbid or gloomy streak. Then again, I suspect that most Californians who have a little seismic knowledge find themselves thinking things from time to time that they would rather not think about at all.

The Leona Valley is, in truth, a surface manifestation of the San Andreas Fault. It is a depressed block bounded by two uplifted scarps, and Lake Elizabeth and Lake Hughes just a little to the west are “sag ponds” – depressions created in a seismic event which later filled with water.

Examination of exposed rock in the region shows that this segment of the San Andreas has ruptured multiple times in the last thousand years, each time with tremendous violence and destructive power. The average interval is less than 150 years. The last rupture was 1857. The result was Southern California’s last “Big One,” the Great Fort Tejon Earthquake, with magnitude estimated at 8.0.

Looking at the peaceful valley below, it was hard to believe or accept.

“Have you tried them?”

My friend’s wife was speaking.

“Have you tasted the cherries yet?” she said.

“No.” I shook my head. “Guess I should.”

I searched my pail and chose one with a deep carmine color. It was sweet and tart, in perfect balance. It had been a cold winter after all. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.

My daughter’s voice came from somewhere in the orchard. She and her friend were laughing. I thought of the apt way one of her cousins once described her laugh: “She has the most musical laugh. Her laughter is almost like singing.”

I can’t help worrying about the future and even about the things over which I have little or no control. I try to cope by telling myself that, after all, beauty and terror coexist in many places, not just California. Anywhere we go, there will be something. And for every parent, the heart is the constant battleground of hope and foreboding.

I made a greater effort to move out of the shadows. It is, after all, a beautiful day in the Leona Valley, I reminded myself -- the sun is shining, I am with friends, my daughter is laughing, and the cherries are sweet.