Chapter Eighteen
It was too late in the season to visit Yosemite as Evelyn had wanted—reports were that the approaches were already treacherous due to snow. So, following a suggestion of some people that they talked to at breakfast the next morning, they postponed that for another occasion, and instead drove across the San Joaquin Valley and up into the Sierra foothills to the Mother Lode country of 1849 gold-rush fame.
They toured the old mining town of Columbia, preserved as a state monument, where the buildings remained inside and out just as they had been a century and a half before, and residents wearing traditional dress still worked the old crafts. The Wells Fargo Company office was still there, whose scales had weighed over one and a half billion dollars’ worth of precious metals during the gold era.
Eight miles away they found California’s largest public cave, Moaning Cavern, estimated to be a million years old and large enough to hold the Statue of Liberty upright and still leave room to spare. The bones of approximately a hundred people dating back to prehistoric times had been found at the bottom, 180 feet below the surface—probably the results of unfortunates accidentally falling into the cavern, since until its opening up in recent times the entrance had been just a small, vegetation-covered hole in the surface. The guide, who was also the owner, told them that from the positions that the bones were found in, some of the victims had apparently survived the fall and tried to climb out—a tough proposition, considering the overhangs. Traces of carbonized wood suggested that perhaps others at the surface had thrown down torches in an effort to help. “Of course, it’s impossible to be sure,” he told them, pinching his mustache and chuckling. “But we like to think that some of ’em made it.”
They drove higher into the Sierra, the wild range separating California from Nevada. In every direction they looked they saw tree-covered hills, sweeping expanses of canyon and rock, unfolding vistas of lakes and mountains. Corrigan found himself intoxicated by the feelings of freedom and openness. They gazed down at foaming creeks far below them in sheer ravines, stared up in awe at sequoias with trunks more than twenty feet in diameter. From a crag high in the Sonora pass they clung close as they stared out over the vastness, and it seemed that all of it belonged just to them.
“This time you’ve got to admit it, Joe,” Evelyn said. “Come on. There are some things that even Ireland doesn’t have.”
For once, Corrigan failed to rise to the provocation. The jocular side of him that would normally have responded reflexively was suppressed by a more serious mood. “You can judge for yourself when you see it,” he said.
“When,” Evelyn repeated bitingly. Corrigan had been promising for the best part of a year now that they would go there one day. She didn’t take it seriously anymore.
“Sure.” Corrigan kept his eyes fixed on the distant ridgeline and forced his voice to remain matter-of-fact. “We can go there for our honeymoon.”
She drew her head back slowly, turning to look at him. “Are you serious?”
“Oh, I know I can be an ass about most things, but do you think I’d joke over something like that?” And then he relaxed and smiled, spreading his hands to indicate that was all he had to say.
“You mean it? . . . You really, really do mean it?”
“Of course I mean it, you silly cow of an American female. So do I get an answer, or are you going to stand there looking like that all day?”
She threw her arms around his neck. He pulled her close. They kissed and hugged, rubbed and nuzzled.
“So you will, then, eh?” he murmured.
“You know I will. Didn’t you? . . . Couldn’t you tell?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“How could you not?” She drew back, shaking her head, laughing out loud, unable to contain herself. “So when? . . . Where? How are we going to do it?”
Corrigan shrugged, able to feign nonchalance again, now that he had gotten it out. “Whatever you like. Do you want to hire a cathedral, and maybe a symphony orchestra to go with it?”