"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.

"And that hot spring? This mud pot? This was once Klasmat's central vent. Right here is where the lava flowed. That cliff behind us? Volcanic basalt.

"But look closer and what do you see? See what's up there on the cliff, over on the right-hand side, up near the top?"

Marlene looked where he was pointing, forgetting for the moment that her grandfather was blind. And saw . . .

"Petroglyphs? I never noticed those before."

"That's because you never took the time to see. Those petroglyphs are thousands of years old, almost as old as the valley itself. The Ancient Ones, ancestors of my mother's people, moved back here almost as soon as the lava cooled and found that the mountain spirit had given them a new valley in which to live. Those drawings tell their story."

He turned and faced toward the valley, his unseeing eyes turned to home. "That lake down there, tell me, what's its name?"

Marlene gave him a dubious look. "Summerlake," she said.

"What was that again? My hearing's not what it used to be."

Marlene knew perfectly well there was nothing wrong with his hearing. "Summer Lake."

Geronimo made a face. "Ach! That's what everybody calls it. I guess they think it's because the boys from Fish and Game open it up the first of summer. But the real name, the name given to it by my daddy, is Summer's Lake, in honor of my mother, Summer Muledeer. Let me tell you something of her people, then maybe you'll understand.

"By the time she was born, in 1889, the Yahi were already a vanished people. They had been shot, hanged, raped and sold into slavery. My mother's parents were among the few who had assimilated and found work in town as laborers or maids. Those that survived in the wild fought back as long as they could, while their numbers slowly dwindled, until there was but one 'wild one' left, the famous Ishi. He was captured in 1911, the year before I was born.

"Those petroglyphs up there, like I said, they tell the story of a people and their land. My mother's people. And yours, too. That old Snowy Mountain, she still speaks."

He paused and breathed deeply of the odorous steam coming off the mud pots. "You might smell a stink," he told her, "but this is the breath of the earth. It is the smell of life as well as death. A mountain, long vanished, still gives off its life breath. And a vanished people's spirit lingers still, a spark of memory lives on, in an old, blind half-breed like me.

"I've lived a good life. But I'm old and my time runs short. I was born on this land and it is to this earth here that I will return. In the end, when all else is gone, the earth, the land, remains." He looked all around, as if his eyes could truly see. "It's such a pretty land. Be a shame to spoil it."

Dusk was fast approaching. Geronimo shivered and wrapped his sweater tighter around his body. "These old bones don't take the cold the way they used to," he said. "I think I'll go in now and warm up."

Marlene stood up to go but her grandfather told her, "No. You can stay here awhile and think about what I said. You'll know it's time to come in when the time comes. You'll feel it in your bones, too." He left her with one thought before taking his leave. "The forest has many shades of green," he said. "Be sure your eyes are focused on the right ones."

Marlene walked over to the spot where her grandfather had sat and settled herself into the same position, cross-legged. She took a whiff of the sulfuric fumes and wrinkled her nose. Then she thought about what he had said. The breath of the earth. She supposed that if she were a few billion years old, her breath might not smell so good, either.

She smiled at the thought and closed her eyes, letting her nose acclimatize to the smell. She let her thoughts drift to Summer Muledeer, her great-grandmother, and her people, the Yahi. She thought about a people who had lived in this valley for thousands of years before the coming of white men, before the gold rush, before the Indian hunters.

Summerlake

Summer Lake

Summer's Lake

She opened her eyes and surveyed Summer's valley, this time with something other than a developer's eye. The haunting call of a bird whose name she did not know drifted up from the meadows, welcoming her home to a land she'd forgotten she belonged to. In the gurgle of the springs she heard the soft voice of the earth, whispering to her across the millennia, patiently telling her its story.

Her eyes swept the peaks that rimmed the valley. Their faces were in shadow now, their features muted. In silhouette their profiles blended and became one, a full circle of life and death and life again, wrapping around the caldera that was once Mount Klasmat, the Snowy Mountain.

She tried to imagine that massive mountain looming over her now, while she sat here, at the center of its power. She breathed in again of the breath of that mountain, of the earth itself, and with a sudden, eerie tingling, she understood, for she felt, very distinctly, the lingering presence of a mountain that hadn't existed in ten thousand years, yet whose spirit whispered still. This was indeed a very special land, a land that deserved something other than Summerlake resort.

There was something her grandfather had once told her about why he'd never put up No Trespassing signs along his private property. It was something about the people belonging to the land, rather than the other way around.

Marlene had always looked to the land for what she could gain from it. Perhaps now it was time to put something back, so that the land and its people could gain something in return.

It was dark by the time she was ready to head back. Finding that half a moon was better than no moon at all, she started down toward the house, an idea already shaping itself in her mind.

* * *

"Well, I've got the paperwork signed and ready. But forget Summerlake, Richard, it's too commercial. Oh, I still think we can do something with the place. Something really worthwhile. But think history, think people, not profits. Grandpa would like to see the ranch house converted to a museum, an interpretive center, to educate people about the Native Americans, the Yahi, whose land this once was, and by all rights still should be.

"And there's a deep geologic history here as well, a story we'll tell. Actually the land will tell its own story, once people have taken the hike to the hot springs. The land here has something to say to people, if they just sit and feel its breath on their faces and take the time to listen.

"No, Richard, I'm serious. I'll fill you in tonight. I should make L.A. about dark if the traffic's not too bad. See you then. Gotta go, love. Ciao."