by Lisa Spicer
The well was dry when Mom bought the place two years ago. The silvery wooden lid covering the former water source is nailed shut. Beside the well stands a giant oak tree holding a tire swing. With deep roots, the gnarly old oak is a sign there was water below. Where did it go?
The homesteaders before us rigged up PVC pipe to draw water from the creek running behind the garden beds and sauna. Both our place and the Mitchells’ across the street draw from this section of Marsh Creek before it merges with the upper Albion River, about a football field from here.
When it rains, water from our faucet is muddy. The sink basins are stained a rusty orange. Frozen juice concentrate can’t hide the metallic taste. No matter how much detergent we squirt into hot water, suds don’t happen so we wash without bubbles. Light clothes become dingy, so my sisters and I never wear white.
For people living among the coastal redwoods, water comes from wells, springs, or plastic pipes laid out like straws to sip from creeks and rivers. Locals operate with old-time ingenuity and say things like, that’s how we do it. Way out here, nobody bothers with permits. No one calls the county to report what their neighbors are cutting down, digging up, or putting in. And it’s not for lack of phones.
About half the town’s four hundred and fifty residents live in homes without telephones. By choice, ours included. If we need to make a call, there’s a booth at the store or Bill ‘n Edith’s up the road. Even though it’s 1972, phone service here is by old-fashioned party line, shared by all. You might need to interrupt gossip for an emergency call. There’s always someone listening. Everyone knows everything.
In the time before logging, paved roads, permits, power lines, this was home to the Pinoleville Pomo. Comptche was the band’s mid-way camp, a day’s walk between their winter village in the Ukiah Valley and Buldam, their summer camp on the coast. A place we now call Big River Beach.
In the mid-1800s, Newman Hoak walked with the Pomo from the coast to their midway camp. A tranquil valley with golden grass covering undulating hills surrounded by forest. It’s a place where creeks flow into a river that runs to this day, to the sea. There is a sacred spring with healing waters.
Hoak put down roots and it grew into a timber community, settled primarily by northern European immigrants, whose great, greats are residents today. It’s a perpetual irony. Settlers made land claims without permission or permit from the First Peoples living here. Helping yourself to whatever, without permit, becomes a tradition. One that backfires, especially on newcomers.
By 1960, the valley had three lumber mills in full swing. But by 1967, each mill had gone up in smoke–literally–along with the jobs. Half the town left. Those who stayed founded the volunteer fire department.
For Sale by Owner were signs of the time, attracting back-to-the-landers looking for a return to the garden. Like my mom. It’s now a community where rednecks chafe against long hairs. Adult attitudes are like oil and vinegar. Pachouli versus aftershave. Peace will eventually settle like a blanket of snow that disappears the contrast and brings calm. But first, we newcomers will stir up change.
The old timers say water here’s regular as rain. The rainy season is November to March, when rivers and creeks roar and rage. By springtime, fields are damp and green when we hunt for colored eggs under blue skies. The clouds must head north because during summer, rain is so rare I’ve never seen it. It gets hot. Grass is dry. Fire danger’s high. Creeks run low.
Mom is determined to solve our water problem. She reads up on H2O consciousness and new treatment practices. Our coffee table is filled with stacks of Whole Earth Catalogues, Mother Earth News, and books from the Foxfire series. She consults old timers, and finds a water witch.
At dinner one night she tells us, “I have good news. I took a water sample over to Ukiah today, to the County. They have chemicals to test water composition.”
I ask, “What’d they find?”
“We have what’s called hard water.”
“Hard! How can water be hard?”
“Too much calcium and magnesium. It’s why the dish soap never suds.”
My sister Gina says, “I bet that’s why the water feels slimy. How’s this good news?”
“Because now we know what we’re dealing with. The guy at the county says there’s a machine called a water softener. But they’re very expensive.”
“How are we gonna get one?”
“Tomorrow we’ll go down to the phone and call Gramma. Girls, I’m so relieved. I finally have hope! I really think we can fix this in time to get the garden in.”
From the Sears catalogue, Mom orders a top-of-the-line machine, plus packets of minerals and bottled solutions. With a neighbor, she barters two gallons of milk and a pound of butter for his help setting up the water softener system in our garage.
We’re excited. But the water stays the same. She adjusts the chemistry. Hard water is stubborn. It doesn’t want to change. She invites the water witch again, for tea and incantations. She plants a garden and stakes it with high hopes. The only thing to come up is swiss chard, those rainbow bunches will forever remind me of Mom’s hard water tears.
We moved here two years ago in March. My older sister Gina and I explored the length of Marsh Creek that runs through our five acres. We found a small pool teeming with pollywogs and visited them daily to witness magical frog metamorphosis.
Our creek bed ends at a culvert going under the road. We scrambled up a deer trail and crossed to the other side, where Marsh Creek continues through the Mitchell’s property. They have seven kids! Just two are girls, the eldest and youngest. They climb on the school bus looking sleepy with messy hair. The only one to use a comb is the teenager. He and his buddies use Brylcream, just like their fathers.
Following sounds of mischievous laughter, Gina and I crossed the road and peered over a mound of blackberry vines. Four Mitchell boys were down by the creek. Chasing one another, swinging a gunny sack. What’s inside is alive. We heard kittens freaking out. Someone yelled, “Bombs away!”
Gina and I glance at each other and yell together, “Wait!”
This is how we got our cats. Now we have nine. Most of them live in the barn.
By mid-summer, our creek has dwindled to a trickle sounding like laughter. Our white PVC pipe extends into the air. The exposed creek bed has smooth round rocks. In the shade, small pools of water feature bright green moss clinging to stones. Riding home from school, I hear the boys on the bus make plans to go fishing. Big River and the Albion flow all year.
Originally, the two-lane road to town was the Pomo trail. Then it became a route for stage coaches between Ukiah and Mendocino, when the mid-way valley boasted a mid-way hotel. And still today, on a ridge between Comptche and the coast, there stands a rough-hewn wooden trough for watering horses. It continues through time, fed by a spigot tapped into an eternal spring.
Driving home from town, Mom parks our wood-paneled station wagon on the narrow shoulder. She swings open the back door and we each grab a glass gallon jug. They fill slowly from the spigot, or quickly by submerging them—glug, glug, glug—into the deep wood basin. Mom keeps our metal camping cups in the back, and we sip water that is cold and clear with a hint of minerals, the soft kind. Every time we pass by, we load up on drinking water.
A long-hair imposter known as Idlewild Bob was squatting in a skid shack up Marsh Creek. Skid shacks are portable cabins once used by loggers, hauled by mules from site to site. Idlewild Bob is all round—his face, wire rim glasses, head of frizzy hair, his protruding belly. He has the kind of fat that doesn’t jiggle because it might be muscle. He built himself an outhouse extending over the creek bed. I heard him laugh, “I got a natural-flush crapper!” That right there is a clue he’s not one of us.
Downstream households drawing water from Marsh Creek or the Albion are hit with hepatitis. No one in our house gets sick because we bottle our water at the spring. Along with other bad behavior, the hepatitis outbreak gets Bob run out of town. And not by a sheriff.
Idlewild Bob followed my mom from the city on her hunt for a small farm to raise her four girls, keep a cow and chickens. When we first arrived with a purple school bus holding everything we own, he stayed and assumed the role of disciplinarian. Which failed because we’ve never suffered strict discipline. “You’re not my dad!” I shot back every chance I got.
He tells Mom, loud enough to be overheard, ‘You’d best keep those girls in line. That sass-mouth Lisa—”
“I’ll handle my girls.” But she doesn’t handle Bob Slob. He assigns himself to the task at hand. I must have been sassy, because he dragged me by the arm into the bunkhouse, the room Gina and I share. He had me stand by my bed. Inches from my face he yelled through putrid breath, “Never again! You’ll never speak to your mother that way again!” As an exclamation point, he slapped my face. A type of brutal hit I’d never experienced before or since. I crumbled like an imploding building. Another time, I was a witness. My little sister Renee was hungry–fussing in the kitchen–and suddenly she was smacked airborne, landing hard against a cupboard door. She looked up in shock. Didn’t make a sound. A puddle grew around her as she peed.
Mom kicked him out after that. “Girls, we’re going camping this weekend.” She threw his stuff into boxes and stacked them on the front porch, topped with his hunting rifle and hand gun. Then she did something no one does in Comptche. She locked all the doors.
Driving toward the coast Gina said, “I didn’t know Bob has guns, Mom.”
“Neither did I, until I packed him up. There will be no guns in our house. There is just too much violence. And now it’s happening in our home. I won’t stand for it. We must keep things non-violent, and find other ways to solve problems.”
“Mom, I hate Bob Slob. And don’t tell me we’re s’posed to love everybody.”
“You can feel however you want, Lisa. He’s a bad man.”
I like the way my mom solved the problem of Idlewild Bob. She stood up for all of us. It was exhilarating. At Russian Gulch State Park, we paid the entrance fee and found a spot. It was odd, camping like tourists so near to my school. I recognized a park ranger, my friend Kim’s dad. But I hoped no one would recognize me. We’re not here for the fun of it. Camping’s okay, it’s just not the same without Dad. Sunday afternoon we were back in the station wagon, singing John Denver songs on the country road taking us home.
But for the stack of firewood, the porch was empty. The doors, still locked. He disappeared for a time, until he squatted up stream.
My girlfriends Sharon and Kelly are on horseback, waiting for me on the road outside our front gate. I have Lightning bridled up and ready to go. They told me to wear a bathing suit, so mine is under my jeans and t-shirt. I ride with a bareback pad, and through the handle strap, I tucked an old bath towel. Since we’re riding up Marsh Creek–near enough to Bob’s skid shack–I expect we’ll be wading in a pond with cattails and slimy green algae.
Sharon has a real swimming pool at her house, the city kind with chlorine. Pools in L.A. have prejudiced me. I dreamed of being invited to a swim party someday. Fat chance. Once I went home with her after school. Mother looked down her nose, scrutinizing her daughter’s friend with unruly long hair. You can feel it when someone doesn’t like you.
We head up the dirt logging road on the opposite side of the creek from our house. It leads deep into the redwoods. Passing by the abandoned mill shack trips a bad memory. But I know how to chase it away. “Hey let’s sing You Are My Sunshine. Who wants to harmonize?”
Before long we reach a locked gate. Sharon knows the secret combination. We ride through and continue on. I’ve never ridden this far out. Our horses clop along the sun dappled road and snort with contentment. We come to a clearing. A small dam with sloping banks, sunlight dancing on calm water.
My face does the cod fish. “Wow! I didn’t know this was here!”
We slide off our horses and tether them to graze. I don’t see how we can swim, the banks are smooth and steep. There are no rocks or roots to grab, no easy way in or out. I wonder, if a deer fell in could it escape? Probably, since I don’t see one. But what if it sank?
Kelly laughs. “Everyone knows this is here.”
Sharon walks to the edge. “I can see the bottom.”
“I thought we were swimming.” I wore my new two-piece swim suit.
Sharon peels off her t-shirt. I wish my stomach was flat like hers. “No, we’re sun bathing!”
“Yeah, in private!” Kelly says. “No creepy boys spying on us!”
We spread our towels on the hard dirt above the sparkling water. After slathering ourselves in baby oil, we lay out to bake in the sun. When our brows break a sweat, we walk to the far end of the dam, the inlet. We splash and cool down in the flowing water.
I considered this place wilderness, the kind owned by Earth herself, by God. Trees. Water. Sunlight sparkles. Dragonflies. Apart from the man-made dam with straight edges and hard-packed ground, there were no signs of people. I wondered, were we trespassing? No. It’s owned by Sharon’s father. Some old-time families hold vast amounts of timberland. She has the gate code. This is private water storage. Did they get a permit?
It’s contagious, the right to do your own thing, consequences be damned. In the future, river water rights will be grandfathered and metered. “Karma,” Mom would say.
Hindsight is water under the bridge. But I stood on that bridge and saw what I could not at age twelve. That dam is why Marsh Creek runs dry. The dam is why our well ran dry. The dam is why. We had hard water.
Lisa Spicer (she/her) is a storyteller who works in film and the written word. She is the recipient of three Emmy awards in editing for her work on Bill Nye the Science Guy, and won the Bellingham Mayor’s Arts Award for the Homeless in Bellingham Film Project. She recently won first place in short story from Chanticleer Review, and publishes an article on Substack, “Collective Effervescence: Research About the Counterculture”.