Peace on Earth : At First Glance Meling Ranch Isn’t All That Special, but You Would Have a Difficult Time Convincing Visitors of That

There’s gold in these here hills. And mountain lions, bobcats and rattlesnakes, too. And a dozen or so miles up the road at the Meling Ranch, a wacky rooster breaks the dead silence each morning by crowing at 3 a.m.

“Is he on Eastern time or what?” a confused Robert Grossman asked at the breakfast table one recent day. “Aren’t they supposed to do that at daybreak?”

Grossman, 29, had come with his girlfriend, Ilana Besser, from Venice, Calif., where the only late-night wildlife consists of people acting up on the street. Here, the wildlife is genuinely wild--and often unpredictable.

“We were out there one day, feeding the chickens, and everything started to go wild and we looked out in the field and there was, like, three bobcats,” Karen Hughes of San Diego said of one of her many trips here. “They were leaping and jumping and just playing and it wasthe most exciting thing to see.”

Meling Ranch, located about 100 miles southeast of Ensenada, is not your typical Baja vacation spot. It is so far off the beaten path from the waterfront resorts to the south that you have to beat a path for 32 miles over washboard terrain to get there. And once you do, you find yourself in a world that time forgot.

“It’s like a page out of the Old West,” one visitor commented.

The ranch, which has been run by the same family since just after the turn of the century, has been a stopover for gold miners in wagons and pack trains, has been attacked by bandits and land-grabbers, and has endured fires, droughts and floods.

Vaqueros --Mexican cowboys--still drive cattle to and from the seasonal ranges, build fences from fallen wood and saddles from freshly-tanned leather. Some of the locals still pan for gold.

Sycamores and willows tower above the banks of a nearby stream. Owls hoot at night, roosters crow at dawn--most do, anyway--and dogs wander lazily about the grounds.

Coyotes and wildcats prey on livestock under the cover of darkness, and if they becometoo troublesome, are hunted down, Old West-style, come daylight.

“Once they start killing calves, then they find it’s easier to kill a calf than to run a deer down,” said Aida Meling, 76, who was born on the ranch and has lived there all her life. “When their tracks are down there, you sic a dog on him and he usually chases him and trees him--and if you run into him, you shoot him.”

But protecting the livestock from predators is part of living there and, like those who have gone before her, Aida Meling has been able to do that and still be there for the guests, many of whom find her charm and wit an integral part of the visit.

“She’s one of the last great celebrities of Baja,” said Tim Hughes, her 28-year-old grandson.

For most of the guests, Meling Ranch has become sort of a secret hideaway, not well publicized and therefore a perfect escape from the city.

“It’s a magical place, it really is,” said Richard Grossman, 28, an acupuncturist from Santa Monica who fell in love with the Meling guest ranch a year ago and has returned five times since.

Actually, there is nothing magical about the 10,000-acre spread at the foot of the rugged Sierra San Pedro Martir Mountains, although anyone who has watched the stars light the night sky might disagree, as might anyone who has seen the colorful explosion of wildflowers in spring bloom.

But there is something special about the rustic ranch.

Nights are so quiet that city folks sometimes have trouble getting used to them.

“I’m afraid to talk because I don’t want to upset the silence around here,” said Jim Dyer, 62, whose first visit was 21 years ago. “You can straighten a horseshoe on an anvil down there a quarter of a mile away and you can hear it (here), I’m sure.”

Besser, on her return to the city, said she couldn’t get to sleep, despite her exhaustion from the long drive back, “because of the city lights and the noise.”

She said: “Down at the ranch, it was just so peaceful, with just the sound of the animals and everything.”

Days at the ranch aren’t much noisier, except during the fall, when hunters enter the San Telmo Valley to shoot quail and doves. Many stay at the ranch.

But many visitors do nothing but lounge by poolside, reading a book, listening to songbirds singing and leaves rustling in the breeze.

On horseback in the foothills, riders can pick from among many trails that wind over the cactus-laden hillsides and through valleys lush with vegetation, thanks to cold-running creeks flowing from the mountains.

It’s not uncommon to see bobcats or mountain lions, sunning themselves atop large granite boulders that rise above the chaparral.

For the more adventuresome, there are the ranch-conducted pack trips into the majestic San Pedro Martir, amid majestic pine forests, grassy plains and waterfalls that make you forget you are in Baja California.

Horses are driven to a point high above the ranch and met by the guests, who then need ride just a few hours into some of the pristine wilderness, where rainbow trout are natural and wild--not managed and replenished by man. Fishing is allowed but the locals stress a catch-and-release policy.

Before the heavy rains of last March, which dumped 17 inches of rain on the hills, it was even possible to try your luck in the pond behind the ranch.

Hughes and ranch hands had carefully transplanted enough trout from the mountains to establish a small fishery, which was destroyed by the raging torrent that roared through the area last spring.

“I’ve caught 21-inch trout in there, too,” Hughes said.

At night, Hughes may take guests on a tour of the cemetery a few hundred yards from the ranch. Elaborate headstones mark the graves of family members and friends, and two-stick crosses and piles of rock mark those of Indians buried before European settlers came to the area.

“I got both of my husbands in that graveyard,” said Aida Meling, who has not married again. “I don’t think I’ll put the third one there.”

Also buried in the hillside cemetery is Aida’s father, Salve, and mother, Alberta, who was known throughout the area as “Bertie.”

Bertie Meling spent years working her father’s gold mine in Arroyo Socorro, 10 miles north of Meling Ranch.

Arthur Walbridge North, a friend of the family, once wrote of his trips through the canyons and high meadows of the range. He considered Bertie “the most interesting personality in the countryside.”

Once, during the absence of “the menfolk” Bertie heard that marauding Indians and Mexicans were about to make off with 50 head of her father’s cattle.

“Without pausing to rest, she rode the cattle for 13 hours, indeed using up two saddle horses,” Walbridge wrote. “The range riding was so rough, but she saved all the cattle.”

Bertie’s father, Harry Johnson, bought what is now Meling Ranch--it has been called, and still is by some, Rancho San Jose--in 1910. In 1925 Bertie and husband Salve bought the spread from Harry and it has been home to the Meling family ever since. And a home away from home for many others for nearly as long.

One group has spent Thanksgiving there for 46 consecutive years and is due again this year, Aida said. Another large group is coming from Italy to spend Christmas. Guests have included actors, senators and even a former astronaut who once set foot on the moon.

“You come here, you can be the most famous person in the world and I won’t even know who you are,” Aida said. “You’re just a human being here. You behave yourself, you can stay as long as you want. But you misbehave and you go down that road.”

The Meling Ranch can be reached through a San Diego agency at (619) 758-2719.