ABSTRACT
The Mission San Carlos Borromeo looks inshore up the valley of Carmel to the lilac-colored crests of Santa Lucia; off shore, the view just clears the jaws of Lobos along the sunpath between it and Cypress Point. Full in the crescent bay the sea lifts in a hollow curve of chrysoprase, whose edge goes up in smoking foam along the hard packed beaches—ever and ever, disregardful of the nondescript shacks, the redwood bungalows and pseudo-Spanish haciendas crowding one another between the beach and the high road. But when I first came to this land, a virgin thicket of buckthorn sage and sea-blue lilac spread between well-spaced, long-leaved pines. The dunes glistened white with violet shadows, and in warm hollows, between live oaks, the wine of light had mellowed undisturbed a thousand years.
