Passport to Adventure

Summerlake

"There's still gold in these hills, Richard. Don't you worry. Summerlake is going to make us a fortune."

Tucking her cell phone under her chin, Marlene O'Brien swung the Mercedes from Summer Lake Road into the sharp turn that led to Geronimo's ranch. "Anyway, I'll call you after I've seen the ol' man and gotten the paperwork. Gotta go, love. Ciao."

As she hung up, the late afternoon sun played through the conifer forest, dusting the windshield with flakes of gold. As well it should, for this was California's Gold Country. And it was quite a modern gold mine that had been dropped into Marlene's lap. Her grandfather, concerned about the property he was leaving to Marlene, his sole surviving heir, had called her here today to discuss a few things before signing over the deed.

A real estate developer, Marlene had a keen eye for seeing the true worth of the land. She hadn't minded the long, ten-hour drive up from Los Angeles; she already had grand plans for the spread. Summerlake-she already thought of it as one word; it had more marketing potential-would be her crowning achievement, and one she had a personal connection to. Many a childhood summer had been spent on her grandfather's ranch, though she hadn't been here since her parents died. But now, with its location in the Northern Sierra Nevada, Summerlake could be an ideal luxury vacation resort, only two and a half hours from Sacramento and a bit over four from the Bay Area.

Around one more bend, out of the woods, and a high valley opened up before her. Ahead lay Summer Lake, a little gem of the Sierra, half a mile long by a quarter wide. Beyond, the valley's uneven floor rose in a patchwork of forest and rolling meadows to its rim of rugged peaks.

She parked in front of the rambling ranch house. A friendly bark from Connor, her grandfather's golden retriever, announced her arrival. The ancient screen door squeaked its welcome and her grandfather shuffled out to greet her, one hand on his guide dog's harness. Gerry "Geronimo" O'Brien, son of an Irishman and a Yahi Indian, gave his granddaughter a firm hug and ushered her inside. At ninety-two, he was still spry, though now blind and no longer able to properly care for the hundred-acre chunk of prime California real estate he was leaving to Marlene.

"Let's take a walk up to the hot springs," he said after she'd settled in. There was about an hour of daylight left. He called Connor and then told Marlene, "There are things you should know before this property becomes yours to do as you see fit." He said it in such a way that Marlene wondered if he could guess what she had in mind.

The sulfuric smell was guide enough to the burbling mud pots and steaming springs that trickled in tiny rivulets to join the creek that fed Summer Lake. The springs lay in a small grotto, partially walled in by a thirty-foot-high escarpment that wrapped around in a half circle. Geronimo sat cross-legged at the edge of the oozing, grey mud and inhaled the fumes of brimstone as if they were a tonic to his soul. Marlene, in her mind, was already drafting the health spa she could build here.

"Look around you," the old man instructed. "Tell me what you see."

Marlene could already see the five-star hotel, tennis courts and time-share condominiums, but she merely told her grandfather, "I dunno, the hot springs, the valley, the trees? An old house that could use a second story to take advantage of the lake view. And beyond that, the mountains."

"Ach! The blind leadin' the blind," Geronimo muttered to himself. To Marlene he said, "This valley is a caldera. Know what a caldera is?"

"Kind of like a volcanic crater, right?" Now that she looked, the valley was almost circular, crater-like, rimmed by steep-walled mountains.

"Ten thousand years ago, there was a big mountain right here, where we sit. Mount Klasmat, the geologists call it, the Yahi word for 'Snowy Mountain.' 'Bout twelve thousand feet high, she was. At the time, she would have been the southernmost volcano in the Cascades. Right here is where the Cascades and the Sierra met. Until a series of massive eruptions collapsed the entire mountain, like Mount St. Helens times ten, and left this caldera here. Those mountains you see all around? They're all just remnants of the slopes that once were Mount Klasmat.