Famous Ranch Loses Feisty Matriarch

Aida Meling’s ailing heart finally gave out. The spirited owner of Meling Ranch in northern Baja California died suddenly and painlessly late last month. But she did not go quietly. It wasn’t her way.

“It had been raining up on the mountain, but the minute we walked down and put her in the back of the truck, the rain came down on us,” recalled her sister, Duane Barre of Vista. “And then it just started pouring, with constant thunder and lightning. And what was really weird is that it completely stopped the minute we covered her up. It was like she was saying, ‘OK, kids. This is my final say, I’m outta here.’ ”

Aida Meling is outta here, all right, having had the last word, as usual. She had been laid to rest with a pack of smokes in her casket at the foot of her mother’s grave in the family cemetery on the remote and rustic guest ranch about 115 miles south of Ensenada, 30 miles off the highway in the foothills of the rugged San Pedro Martir Mountains.

She died of a heart attack in the ranch house Aug. 21, two days before what would have been her 83rd birthday, which was nonetheless celebrated by family and friends in her presence.

“We poured wine over her grave, told jokes and lit candles,” said Barre, 50, who with some help from her sister, Sonia Hughes of Santa Monica, is faced with the daunting task of keeping the cattle ranch running smoothly.

Barre will probably do fine. But for the many who knew Aida Meling, the place won’t be the same without her.

The second child and oldest daughter of Salve Meling, a Norwegian immigrant, Aida Meling was born and raised on the 2,500-acre spread and had been in charge for more than 40 years. Anyone was welcome to stop in, shake the dust off and spend the night, she always said, provided they didn’t get out of line.

“You come here, you can be the most famous person in the world and I won’t even know who you are,” Meling said during an interview seven years ago. “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.”

That was her way. She always spoke her mind. She didn’t put up with laziness or ineptitude on the part of her ranch hands, nor was she afraid to let a guest know when they were being inconsiderate to her animals or property.

“She was not one who tolerated fools lightly,” Fred Jones, president of the Baja travel club, Vagabundos del Mar, recalled of his occasional encounters with the sometimes fiery matriarch of Meling Ranch.

But tough as she was, she had a rugged sort of charm that endeared her to hundreds of veteran Baja travelers who often went out of their way just to stop in and say hello, perhaps to stay the night.

To them, the ranch was more then Aida Meling’s home. It was and remains a secret hideaway where one can hike or ride horses by day and relax under a night sky filled with a million glittering stars.

The ranch has been a stopover for gold miners in wagons and pack trains. It has been attacked by bandits and land grabbers, and it has endured fires, floods and droughts.

Cowboys, or vaqueros, still drive cattle to seasonal ranges and ride in saddles fashioned from freshly tanned leather. Mountain lions and bobcats prowl the grounds. Pack trips that originate here take visitors deep into a wooded forest few are even aware of, one with deep winter snow and meandering streams full of wild trout.

My first visit was in 1991. I stopped after a surfing trip with my brother to San Quintin. Aida Meling was gracious enough. She checked us in, told us when meals were served, showed us our room and explained that there was no electricity at night, only a kerosene lamp on the table between the beds.

Sleep came easily that night, but she had this one loco rooster that felt the urge to crow every night at 3 a.m. I woke to this the first night and immediately went into panic mode because I couldn’t see a thing, not a sliver of light or even the movement of my hands directly in front of my face. I was sure I had somehow gone blind and I knocked the lamp over while stumbling around looking for a flashlight.

I finally found the light, turned it on and breathed a huge sigh of relief when I discovered that I had not gone blind after all. I reasoned that I had never been far enough from the city to totally escape the artificial light from it, and thus had never experienced total darkness. My brother, Scott, lambasted me for my lack of composure and we both tried to go back to sleep despite the nauseous aroma of spilled kerosene.

In the morning, Aida Meling had set a huge breakfast buffet before her dozen or so guests. One of them remarked at how delicious the bacon was, to which one of the ranch hands explained that it was because it had come from a freshly butchered pig.

Meling would have none of this. “We got all of the stuff at Price Club in San Diego,” she said, looking sternly at the ranch hand.

Aida Meling is survived by her three children--Barre, Hughes and Philip Smith of Bend, Ore.--a brother and sister, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren. A memorial service will be held in the San Diego area in about two weeks. Meling Ranch can be contacted through Barre by calling (760) 758-2719.

ANOTHER LOSS IN BAJA

Down the road from Meling Ranch in the San Quintin area, they’re still mourning the death of another Baja pioneer. Al Vela, who transformed the Old Mill hotel into arguably the premier fishing and hunting destination in northern Baja, died Aug. 10. He was 87.

Vela, who once was a chef at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York (he served up a mouthwatering black brant at the Old Mill) moved to San Quintin in the 1950s to be closer to his investment in a sardine-packing facility. When the sardine fishery collapsed, he turned the packing plant into a motel.

The rest is history as the Old Mill remains the most popular motel in San Quintin.

MORE ROUGH TIMES

It has indeed been a tumultuous month in Baja, one that tourism officials would just as soon you ignore. A few examples:

* Hurricane Isis tore through the East Cape last week, with destructive winds and flooding throughout the popular resort community between La Paz and Cabo San Lucas.

At least two people were killed and several others were still missing as of Thursday morning, according to unofficial reports.

The highway reopened this week in both directions, power has been restored and water and fuel is available, though in limited supply. The bad news: rain continues to fall because of tropical storm Javier, which is losing strength just off Land’s End in the Pacific.

* Residents of southern Baja hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. A bus on the trans-peninsular route from La Paz to Tijuana was hijacked recently in Ciudad Constitucion, a fairly large town 120 miles north of La Paz, by masked gunmen who forced the driver to detour down a side street and robbed all the passengers.

There were few, if any, tourists aboard, but this is believed to be the first time this type of crime has happened on the peninsula.