She led Donald to a huge circle
carpeted with cerise sand verbena, with pink and yellow iceplant
bloom, with jewelled iceplant foliage, with the running blue of
the lovely sea daisy, with the white and pink of the sea fig,
where the walls were festooned with ferns, lichens, studded all
over with flaming Our Lord's Candles, and strange, uncanny,
grotesque flower forms, almost human in their writhing turns as
they twisted around the rocks and slipped along clinging to the
sheer walls. Just where the vegetation met the white, sea-washed
sand, Linda spread the Indian blanket, and Donald brought the
lunch box. At their feet adventurous waves tore themselves to
foam on the sharp rocks. On their left they broke in booming
spray, tearing and fretting the base of cliffs that had stood
impregnable through aeons of such ceaseless attack and repulse.
"I wonder," said Donald, "how it comes that I have lived all my
life in California, and today it seems to me that most of the
worthwhile things I know about her I owe to you. When I go to
college this winter t.he things I shall be telling the boys will
be how I could gain a living, if I had to, on the desert, in
Death Valley, from the walls of Multiflores Canyon; and how the
waves go to smash on the rocks of Laguna, not to mention cactus
fish hooks, mescal sticks, and brigand beefsteak. It's no wonder
the artists of all the world come here copying these pictures.
It's no wonder they build these bungalows and live here for
years, unsatisfied with their efforts to reproduce the pictures
of the Master Painter of them all.
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