Life Style Is Distinctive on Palomar Mountain

Chris the Woodcutter isn’t the typical resident of this mountain, but everyone likes to point him out as the kind of character who most feels at home here.

Chris has baby blue eyes and a soft, clear voice that emanates from the middle of a wild brown beard. His hands are sticky with wood sap. He’s not Paul Bunyan big--maybe only 6-foot-2 and 230 pounds--but he’s strong. Real strong.

He greets old friends with bear hugs, lifting them off the ground. He throws tree stumps into the back of Bertha, his pickup truck, like just so much kindling. With two gigantic swings of an axe, he can split a log too big for most men to even budge.

He lives on the southern slope of the mountain. He runs a generator when he needs electricity, and the only running water nearby is from natural springs. He sleeps in a suspended tent that covers a mattress swinging from ropes strung from a huge live oak tree.

As Chris Marszalek, he used to manage apartments in San Diego. He was a bill collector. He worked as a management trainee at a drugstore chain. He went to law school. Then, about 10 years ago, he and a buddy moved into a $50-a-month cabin up here, and one day he got a job delivering wood to an old lady. One thing lead to another, and now he’s Chris the Woodcutter.

Local folks and the government hire him to clear dead or infected trees. He’s a one-man lumber company.

This place--all of it--is his home. He can tell you where the birds are nesting, and where the baby foxes are burrowed.

“I dig the wilderness,” Chris said. “I know the creatures and the trees. I’m out here every day. I fit here better than I do in the city. I do my wood. I bust my buns and the trees fall.”

He points to a huge log that holds too much potential to be reduced to campfire fuel. “That’s a cigar store Indian. Not yet, but it’s gonna be,” he proclaims. Chris is an artist, too. The trees are his medium.

“I’m into cutting wood. I’m good at it, and there’s a lot of it around.”

Chris the Woodcutter may well be the most dramatic resident of Palomar Mountain, in his life style if not his appearance. But he accurately reflects the kind of spirit that is drawn to the mountain.

As residential communities go, this is not mainstream society.

There are scientists who use Palomar Mountain as a base from which to spy into deep space.

There are introspective yogis who own a small retreat and operate the only general store and restaurant (vegetarian, naturally).

There are families dating back generations on the mountain, able to walk through a meadow of waist-high ferns and detect even the most subtle trail.

There are cowboys and shepherds who can take you to the sweetest artesian springs.

There is not any noise. There is virtually no smog. There are no gas stations, motels, gift shops or pizza delivery boys in red, white and blue. The closest convenience store is 50 minutes away--so it’s not convenient at all.

And there’s no through traffic up here. You don’t come here on your way to somewhere else. This is the destination, and every road up here is a dead end, either at the Palomar Observatory parking lot, the state park campground or the old lodge on Crestline Road.

Three groups of people come up here. There are the tourists, who come up to camp beneath the cedars and oak, to play in the snow or to visit the observatory. There are the part-time residents, with their weekend cabins and their flash-in-the-pan get-away attitudes. And there are the 400 or so permanent residents who live up here to get away from it all. They’re a private bunch, by and large, and they enjoy a certain camaraderie. They have shown they can survive the snow, the isolation and the tourists, and have succeeded quite well in preserving the mountain as probably the most pristine parcel of God’s Good Earth in San Diego County.

Given Palomar Mountain’s sensitive environment, it figures that local controversies have focused on growth and development.

In 1978, the Costa Mesa-based Yoga Center and Spiritual World Society--which previously had purchased the mountain’s only store and restaurant--announced its intention to develop a 36-acre retreat adjacent to the commercial property.

The proposal split the community. Many residents had befriended the young yoga students who had manned the store and restaurant. They figured the yogis, as well as anyone, would respect and preserve the mountain environment.

Others, however, were concerned that the retreat would attract thousands of additional motorists to the mountain for weekend retreats, causing traffic headaches, noise and irreparable harm to the mountain’s sensitive ecology.

There was suspicion, too, because the Yoga Center and some of its executives had purchased other key parcels of mountaintop property, including some allowing for relatively dense developments.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted to allow the yogis to operate the retreat with 10 full-time residents and as many as 96 additional people for six weekends a year.

Since the decision, the yoga retreat center has not been the focus of further controversy. But some residents say they wish the restaurant, Mother’s Kitchen, would at least serve meat.

However, the yogi controversy paled in comparison to the brouhaha caused by a proposed religious camp known as Palomar Mountain Lakes.

The proposal was first made in 1968, and called for a 560-acre development on the southeastern slope of Palomar Mountain, featuring a water slide, football and soccer fields, volleyball, basketball and tennis courts, snack bar, book and gift store, gymnasium, 40-horse stable, cable-drop ride, golf course and enough dormitories for 386 people.

The proposal was approved by the county that year, but no construction occurred, and those residents who were aware of the project soon forgot about it.

But the developer asked the county planning staff last year if the major use permit he received 17 years earlier was still valid. Yes, the county said, since the site had been used to some degree as a primitive campground for church groups. The project was, in bureaucratic terms, “vested” and thus it could still be built--without having to meet the rigid environmental protection laws that had been adopted in the interim.

The news alarmed the mountain community.

“It sounded more like an amusement park than a religious campground,” said George Ravenscroft, chairman of the Palomar Mountain Planning Organization.

The shock was compounded by word that the dormitories could be sold on a “time share” basis, with many different groups participating, Ravenscroft said.

“There has never been an issue that has galvanized the community like this one,” he said. “We were incredulous. Nobody’s saying the developer shouldn’t be allowed to build on the property, but he should play by today’s rules.”

The mountain residents appealed the planning staff’s decision to the county Planning Commission, which upheld the project as still valid despite the passage of 17 years.

So, the mountain planning organization, with private donations, and the California Institute of Technology, which owns and operates the Palomar Observatory, have filed a lawsuit to block the project. They say it should have to meet present-day environmental standards, not ones that were in effect in 1968.

Caltech is concerned that light pollution from the development, just a few miles south of the world-renowned observatory, would seriously handicap its stargazing mission--ironically, at a time when astronomers have been successful in getting other communities to turn off their lights at night and to convert to less offensive, low-pressure sodium lighting.

Gerry Hermanson, deputy director of the county Department of Planning and Land Use, said William Savage, the Rancho Santa Fe investor and front man for Palomar Mountain Lakes, still has some stringent conditions to meet before he can build the project.

Among the requirements made in 1968 was that the project have access not only to County Road S-7, which runs closest to the site, but to another road as well. But no other road runs near the site, and the cost of building an emergency driveway to County S-6, several miles away across hilly terrain, may prove prohibitive.

Before construction could begin, the developer also would first have to be issued a grading permit based on current standards and regulations, versus those in existence in 1968.

“The fear that this would be a great big commercial operation, a mini-theme park, is not envisioned by us or by the (planning) commission,” Hermanson said. “This is intended to be a church camp operation. If they want to time-share it, that’s legal.”

Would the project be approved if a fresh application were made today?

“It’s possible,” he said. “But you’ve got to play by the rules that existed at the time. Under the rules they came in under, they did what they had to do. Sure, today we’d have much more control over the project but, at the time, we didn’t. What can you say?”

For now, the project is in limbo. The lawsuit has been filed, and Savage said he is not moving forward with the development at this time.

“It’s not being pursued,” he said in a reluctantly granted telephone interview. Yet he defends the project and says it has been mischaracterized in the community.

The water slides and other “recreational amenities,” as he calls them, were only “possibilities” intended to “provide the finest conference grounds possible. We enlisted the services of the nation’s leading specialists in the designing of these kinds of facilities.”

If and when it is built, Palomar Mountain Lakes will be a 50- to 75-year project, he said. “It will begin in modest proportions and grow only if the need is demonstrated,” he said.

Jennifer Willis has lived on the mountain for more than 17 years, and serves as postmaster--working out of an office no bigger than a walk-in closet, squeezed in between the store and the restaurant.

The community is so small (about 150 families) that mail needs little more than a first name to be delivered to the right person, she says. “Sometimes mail is addressed only to ‘Grandma on Palomar Mountain’ but I can still figure out who should get it, based on the return address. It’s that kind of a community,” she said.

This 6,140-foot-high mountain of fractured granite offers the purest spring water in San Diego County; much of it is bottled and sold. The night air sparkles with clarity. Palomar has firs, cedars, pine and black oaks; it’s got mountain lions and mule deer, eagles and hawks.

One visitor at the turn of the century described what he called “the surprise of Palomar.”

“There it stands, a hanging garden above the arid land. Springs of water burst out of the hillsides. The road runs through forests that a king might covet.”

So why doesn’t the whole world flock up here to set up housekeeping?

There simply aren’t too many jobs up here, and the commute to work off the mountain can be grueling. The two-lane road isn’t all that narrow, but it’s awfully winding and the grade is steep. It takes its toll on an automobile. Indeed, in the early days of the automobile, the first motorists to Palomar Mountain would tie trees to the back bumper of their car for the return trip back home, to help keep their speed down.

And in the mid-1800s, the mountain’s residents included cattle and horse rustlers in hiding. They figured no one would find them here, or even try looking.

The mountain generally is attractive as a full-time residence only to those who are retired or who can find work up here, and who don’t mind living miles from movie theaters, restaurants, supermarkets and gas stations.

“That road down the mountain is a killer to the average person,” said Cliff Ellerby, who has lived up here full time for seven years. “During the first year we lived up here, I’d drive down every day to work on Morena Boulevard in San Diego. That was an hour and a half drive. I’d stop in Escondido for breakfast to break it up.”

The lack of local jobs and the long drive up and down the mountain are not the only factors in keeping down the mountain’s population. With the exception of the small community of Crestline, which was subdivided some 50 years ago into a couple dozen city-size lots, lot sizes generally are not smaller than eight acres. So Palomar will never get crowded with residents.

The place, however, does get jammed with tourists come the snow season.

“We’re not crazy about the snow bunnies,” Ellerby said. “They run rampant over your property and have no regard for property rights. When they drive up here, they see a sign that reads, ‘Entering the Cleveland National Forest.’ So they figure the whole mountain is theirs.”

Dutch Bergman, whose family is the largest private property owner on the mountain with 4,000 acres, said: “People who are normal down below go all to hell and have absolutely no conscience when they come up here for the snow. They think this is one giant Disneyland. If there are fences, they break ‘em down. They park in your driveway and play in your front yard.”

In fact, while state and national parkland makes up about half of the 36-square-mile mountaintop, most of the property along the main roads is privately owned.

Not everyone who lives up here knows everyone else who lives up here, despite the presumed intimacy of Palomar Mountain.

Bergman is a fifth-generation Palomar Mountain resident. His great-great-grandfather, Jacob Bergman, settled here around 1850 while driving the Vallecitos stagecoach around the base of the mountain. Despite Bergman’s presence and history on the mountain, he says there are some people he has never met because they work down below, and when they get home at night, they sequester themselves in their cabins.

If you want to meet the old-timers, all you’ve got to do is hang around The Store in the late afternoon. It’s happy hour, and the fellas and their ladies will buy six-packs of beer, walk out onto the front porch, plunk down on a firewood storage box, stow their beer in a big icebox, and tell tales for an hour or two.

“If you can afford a six-pack of Coors, you can make friends real easy on Palomar,” one of them says.

It’s not a time for serious talk. What’s the hardest thing about living up here? The answer comes quickly: “When it gets icy, we’ve got bad problems. The Coors truck can’t get up here.”

Sittin’ outside The Store isn’t the only social going-on. There’s the barn dances at Bailey’s, the Fourth of July barbecues, the volunteer fire department’s fund-raisers, the Woodchoppers’ Ball and the community potlucks at the Palomar Observatory recreation room.

There’s no hurry up here, either.

“We don’t wear watches,” Bergman said. “We don’t always know what day of the week it is, but we usually know what half of the month it is. What we don’t get done today can wait until tomorrow.”

Among the mountain residents are 13 families who live in cottages owned by Caltech on the 2,000-acre Palomar Observatory grounds. These are the men and women who are employed full-time at the observatory to help maintain the telescopes (all five of them) for the visiting astronomers, and to operate the souvenir stand for the tourists.

The observatory, with its 200-inch telescope--the second biggest in the world--is not open to tourists during its nightly operations.

“It costs us $40,000 a year to be open to the public, in wages and supplies like floor wax and toilet paper,” said Bob Thicksten, the observatory superintendent.

“But we have no way of reimbursing ourselves, since one of the establishing endowments for the observatory stipulated that we allow the public to visit it at no charge. So we have no way of recouping the cost of being open. Some people don’t understand why we can’t give them guided tours. They don’t understand the strain it places on us to let them in at all.”

In recent years, new landowners have been more conscientious about surveying their property lines when they buy land.

“This place isn’t like the city, where you know what you’re buying because the curbs are poured and the fence is already up,” said Cliff Ellerby. “Up here, you’re not always sure what you’re buying. The buyer is told, ‘Your property runs from this tree to that rock to that creek to that wood pile.’ The buyer believes it.

“Then, the buyer puts up a garage and his neighbor comes over and says, ‘What the hell you doing? You’re on my property.’ So, for that reason, most people these days are having surveys done before they buy property,” Ellerby said.

“There’s a sense of respect for those who live up here,” says Bob Russell, a local construction worker who plays classical music on his violin and country and western music on his fiddle.

“People say, ‘Ah, to live on the mountain.’ But it’s not that easy. You can turn into a vegetable up here if you don’t find something to keep you busy, because the mountain won’t keep you busy.

“Some people will move up here, and after a year or two, move back off. They can’t handle the snow or the isolation. It sounds good until they try it.”

Sharon Bergman lived in San Diego as a youngster and attended sixth-grade school camp at Palomar Mountain State Park. She liked the place. In 1971 she found a cheap cabin and moved up here. She got a job at The Store and met Dutch Bergman. They got married in 1979, and their 3-month-old son, Wesley Garrett, is now a sixth-generation mountain resident.

“This is where we’ll be spending the rest of our lives,” she said. “There may be other places just as beautiful, but this is where I am, and I love it.

“We’re living happily ever after.”