Settling Down in a Desert Oasis

The signs and portents for my living in the desert paradise at La Quinta are not good. My house was painted the wrong color; a 10-minute deluge washed out 40 tomato plants that my son, Tim, had just planted, and Peaches, dear little thing, tried to bite the nice man at the dog grooming place.

She is having a hard time adjusting to this change in her life, but surely, no more than I.

Peaches is now 8 years old and she has never seen anyplace but my house in Pasadena, since the day I plucked her from among her brothers and sisters and took her home.

My furniture and clothes are stacked in two finished garages within the condominium group. I thoughtfully put a box marked “shoes” in my car and when I opened the box at my friend Jean’s, where I am staying, I found that they were, indeed, shoes. Evening shoes. Black satin, white satin, moire, rhinestone-sparked velvet, suede with gold bangles. Exactly the footwear I need to slog through the dirt trying to get to the house I some day hope to live in.

I am delighted to know that Los Angeles had rain last weekend. We didn’t have any in La Quinta, only farther east where Tim lives. I will miss the rain in La Quinta; I bloom like a daisy when the rain patters down.

Since I wrote about Los Coyotes and the Bradshaw Trail, visible as a fold in the mountains to the east, I have been lucky enough to speak to Julie Hector, who is a board member of the Palm Springs Historical Society. She gives talks on the history of the Coachella Valley.

The Bradshaw Trail was named for Big Bill Bradshaw, who was looking for a stagecoach route to Los Angeles from La Paz in the New Mexico Territory.

He discovered a path through the Chocolate Mountains and on Nov. 4, 1863, he set out on his first trip with 36 passengers, not counting the driver. It was not to be a highly successful freight and passenger line for Big Bill Bradshaw. He and the driver were killed going through San Gorgonio Pass.

Bradshaw led his stagecoach brigade from the New Mexico Territory through Prescott and Ehrenburg, Ariz., and then through Indio, Palm Springs and Banning before he died. Bradshaw was the first person to call Palm Springs Agua Caliente for the hot springs he found. The Cahuilla Indians in the area became known as the Agua Calientes.

After Bradshaw’s disastrous trip there was no regular stagecoach route for passengers or freight until 1868, when the stagecoach operators called the trail the Bradshaw Road, which it has been ever since.

Painting my house the color other than what I had chosen turned out to be a happy occurrence. I decided that I liked the pinkish gray; it is now better than the dusty peach I had selected. And Tim and his wife, Geri, have replanted the tomato plants and dozens more, so everything is turning out for the best as long as Peaches gets a grip on her disposition.