More About Walker Basin

More About Walker Basis
©Joanne H. Harris, 2008

The first memories I have of horses are when we lived in Walker Basin. We lived on a piece of land that was part of Nick Williams' ranch. It was just a log cabin in a meadow. The only other creature in that section was Bubbles, Nick’s Hereford bull.

Nick’s place had a corral, and I remember a corral full of horses. I remember walking into the corral and all of the horses rushed to the far side except for one, a horse named Shine that my mother rode when she helped Nick and his daughter, Nita, move cattle.

The next memory I have is about the same horse, Shine. Mama was peeling apples and she gave me some apple cores or apple skins to give to Shine. Unfortunately, she didn’t give me any lessons on how to feed a horse, so of course I presented the peels with my fingers bent. The poor thing proceeded to grab my fingers and bite me, but not on purpose. He really didn’t do me any harm, but I shrieked and mother came out and gave me a tardy lesson on how to feed horses. Even this didn’t make me shy of horses.

Our cabin had no running water or indoor plumbing. What was that stuff called electricity? I don’t think the main ranch had electricity. I don’t remember any thing about the inside of the cabin except mom making a down blanket for me out of a down blanket she'd had as a child. That blanket was around for at least 30 years.

Mom has told me that Nick was supposed to provide us with milk, which didn’t happen. Mom had had some experience with guns and had a 22. She could hunt and shoot rabbits. Fritz and I were fond in later years of saying we ate rabbit for breakfast, rabbit for lunch, and rabbit for supper. We also picked wild unions like the Indians did. Daddy came up now and then and brought staples like beans and flour.

Mom used to complain that Nick mixed his sourdough in the flour sack. This included eggs. When he was finished he left a little in the sack for the next starter. Mom said it got pretty strong. Nick didn't throw away coffee grounds daily, but just added more for several days.

The outside of the cabin is what I remember. There was a stream close by with willows to play in. In the spring there were wild violets that I picked by the huge hands full. In the winter Fritz rolled up snow balls and made a fort that lasted long after the snow was gone. One day Daddy shot an owl and stuffed it. Mom complained it looked like an hawk.

We stayed at the ranch in Walker Basin for almost a year. Who knows what was going on with my parents, I do not.

Strangely, I don’t have memories for the next two years. I have pictures of me and my sibling at various houses on Paiute mountain and I know the stories that go with them. For the next couple of years we lived at the Bowman mine, the ranger station, Tommy Thomas’ cabin near Frank and Jenny King's place. Nick Williams had summer range on Paiute at a place called French Meadow. So mom moved with all of us kids, five in all (Audrey, Fritz, cousins Beverly and Dana, and myself) up to the ranger station, which was empty at the time and on French Meadow.

Mom had a couple of goats to provide milk for us kids. The goats ran wherever they wanted to and one time Nick come over to complain that they had “eaten the ass out of one of his saddles”.

He, being a cattleman, would put his cows wherever he could get grass. Since the ranger station in French Meadow was vacant, he ran some cows in the “ranger meadow.” All of the gates were poor man’s gates. These go by many names but they are all barbed wire with a poll that one slips into a wire loop at the bottom and slips a wire loop over the top, I use the term slip loosely because they are very difficult to close, some times impossible. Sometimes a gate on the Ranger meadow got poorly closed or left open. Nick came over one time and told mother if she didn’t keep the gates closed he would wire them shut. She said that that was fine with her because then she would cut one where she wanted it.

Mom still helped out with the cattle from time to time. She had sort of a love/hate relationship with Nick and some of his family, but they never killed each other.

Introduction to Project

Long ago, well, not all that long ago, say seventy years ago, the Heyser family met Paiute Mountain, in the southern part of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. It lies south of the Kern River Valley. They also met an early rancher, Nick Williams. 

After a few years they filed on the old Gehringer Claim, which had an old cabin,  and renamed it High, Wide and Handsome. The Cabin began to take shape on that claim. Today all that remains of The Cabin is a stone chimney. People who camp at Camp Nick Williams (known as French Meadows in the good old days) call it the Stone House.

Throughout the years many people came to visit, friends of the Heysers, business associates, friends of their children, and The Cabin seemed to exert an almost mythic effect on the people who remembered it in later years. 

The purpose of this blog is to invite people still living who have memories of The Cabin to set them down on paper, well, electronically for now, before there are none to remember and it will be just an old chimney, the Stone House. 

Ken Harris (husband to Joanne Heyser)

(My wife made me write this!)