It was a beautiful weekend up at the cabin; up and down our canyon the fall colors are brilliant. After a week of drying out, the floor damage was minimalized and the roof leak was confirmed to be repaired. What now?? Drink coffee, enjoy the fall morning because the afternoon was set to be another July-esq one. And it was, we did a few busy projects and eventually myself, Ric, Kevin, Ken and my father Ron settled onto the deck with the iPod playing, drumsticks on the grill, and a cooler full of Racer 5 IPA. The thermometer crept above 86 degrees and I steered the conversation to 'lore' There's so much lore in the history of the property and my families existence in this canyon since the 1930's. I feel there's a need to document some of the stories and landmarks; they are too good to be forgotten. e.g. We spoke of the mines, the various shafts and railcars that can be discovered on our property and on the properties directly to the north of us. Mining began in the canyon around 1912 by the Sonoma Magnesite Company; you can read about it here on this wiki page for Austin Creek, our drainage is one ridgeline to the east, we sit on East Austin Creek, where most of the mining took place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Creek
......now for the 'lore'. My family took up residence on SMC's property after the operation had shut down but there were still many buildings and facilities around the property. Included with this still standing infrastructure was a caretaker, a one-armed man who seemed mostly concerned about keeping people away from the suspended swinging bridge that crossed east austin just below where our cabin sits today. As the story goes one spring the caretaker was found dead in the river rock beneath the swinging bridge. Pretty obvious what occured right? Wrong. Apparently the one-armed man had learned from his misfortune earlier in his life and valued what he had left, he knew that a swinging bridge was no fit for a one armed man and never crossed over it. The actual conclusion drawn by the canyon residents was that a long time spat between the one armed man and Old Man Dohr had been settled. Dohr killed him and threw him off the bridge. You won't see that on wikipedia.
That's it.....we have tons of that. Lore. We spoke for several more hours, about the history of the canyon and our property. Very nice visit, more to come on that topic. Thanks for a good time guys.
Final Note: Not all is always gravy up at the cabin, as things often do, our sweet frog bottle opener has dissapeared......Usually a dissapearance of any cabin item is automatically blamed on one of my grandparents deciding that the item would work better if it was stored down the driveway in their personal cabin; however my grandparents don't drink......
IPA speculation concluded that our sweet frog has tripped out to Utah with my Grandfather's brother whom recently visited and took a liking to the device whilst indulging in a case of two-buck-chuck. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.....
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