The Enchanted Quest of Dana and Ginger Lamb

Introduction

HNTOOIHKTBON Like everything else they'd done in their lives, Dana and Ginger Lamb made house-hunting a dramatic affair. During the three decades in which they'd become famous explorers and adventurers , their native Orange County, California had turned from a rural idyll into a teeming metropolis. And so it was no surprise that in 1962 they decided to find a new home in a less crowded locale. In earlier days, the pair had sailed from southern California to the Panama Canal in a homemade canoe, hiked deep into the jungles bordering Mexico and Guatemala with no more than they could carry, and explored the deserts of the Baja. Now, given the distance they had to travel to escape the country's twentieth century clutter, it made sense to use their light plane. From the air, they could cross the wastelands of southern Arizona in a few hours. The vast space below looked appealing; but an old friend had recommended a place called Hillsboro, and they decided to look farther. No matter that towering mountains seemed to block the way. To make any distance into southwest New Mexico, one must negotiate the Black Range jutting from the Continental Divide. There's an alternative, of course: taking a hundred-mile detour to the south and back. But from the miners of this region's gold and silver rush of the xiii INTRODUCTION 1870s to the motorists of today, no mere mountain could stop American progress. On horseback or in a wagon, the climb must have been breathtaking , and even an eight-cylinder automobile could be tested by the hair-pin turns that hug the cliff-side before reaching the Emery Pass at nearly 8,500 feet. In a small plane built for an altitude no higher than two miles, the towering peaks above the Pass looked foreboding. Lesser pilots might have opted for the longer but easier route; but if the Lambs acted true to form, there was only one way: over the top. Even in a car, traveling through the Emery Pass gives the sensation of flying, especially when the valley drops away below to reveal the sparse remnants of old mining towns scattered at great distances across the hundreds of square miles suddenly in sight. How striking it must have looked to Dana and Ginger Lamb, who could picture it as only a slightly tamer version of the Mexican wilderness they loved to roam. In their youth, when towns like Santa Ana and Tustin offered little beyond orange and walnut groves, the Lambs preferred Mexico's vast spaces. Now that Orange County had become endless tracts of shoulder-to-shoulder houses, with a pernicious invention known as "freeways" pumping millions of people through what once had been rugged, adventurous country, the alternating deserts and mountains of the American Southwest—still half a generation from being developed into an economic sunbelt—looked very appealing. Here, for the last years of their lives, the Lambs could hope for peace. Dana Lamb escaped the crowds migrating to rural California as early as 1919 when, as a teenager, he interrupted his high school studies to work his way around the world on a freighter. During the Depression he married Virginia Bishop, eleven years his junior. He had no trouble convincing her that the perfect honeymoon would be to spend three years sailing a small improvised vessel from Laguna Beach to the Panama isthmus. Since then, the brave couple had taken other trips, searching for Mayan cities buried in the jungle and lost Spanish missions in the Baja, and had even xiv INTRODUCTION done some espionage work for the government in World War II. In the process, they'd become famous authors and respected lecturers on the art of survival. Now it was time for a retirement of sorts, and a home near the Mexican border seemed right. From 11,000 feet in the air, Dana knew what to look for. He was an experienced aerial photographer, and his skills at surviving and even living comfortably in the wilderness allowed him to make a confident assessment of these new sites below him. Upon clearing the Black Range, he and Ginger would have seen a little strip of habitation called Kingston, where silver had been mined from the hills during the days of Billy the Kid. Another bit of green stood out farther east, a tiny colored mark in the vast New...