Sulphur Mountain: Idylls of Time Past

Sulphur Mountain is real, occupying a choice piece of real estate a few miles east of Ojai, CA. At the same time it occupies a choice piece of real estate in my mind, though I didn’t have much choice regarding its tenancy. Offered the plum of living atop the mountain on a sixty-acre ranch overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the Channel Islands from 1999–2010, I was powerless to keep its colorful denizens from moving in, squatting, resisting all efforts to evict them. At first I was put out, almost literally, cramping my style so as they did; but by degrees, coming to realize they were there for GOOD, I thought, FINE, I’ll write about them, beginning with fiery Agnes Baron, self-styled “Witch of Sulphur Mountain.” In 1946, accepting Indian mystic Meher Baba as who he claimed to be, the Avatar (God in human form), she helped establish Meher Mount, an idyllic 172-acre retreat atop the mountain, and she wrote him in India, "Baba, if you want Meher Mount I’ll keep it for you through hellfire and damnation!" She got plenty of both, spending the remaining 46 years of her life hanging onto it. Meher Baba nicknamed Agnes “Agni,” Sanskrit word for fire, and dubbed her his “Beloved Watchdog.” For 10 years she worried herself more than any dog its bone that it would be sold from under Baba’s feet. Shortly before his only visit to Meher Mount, on August 2, 1956, Agni got Meher Mount in her name. But her worries weren’t over. A single woman without means, she found work as a substitute teacher, and sold strawberries she grew, and lived with the haunting fear she wouldn’t be able to make the mortgage payments, and the bank would seize it. Some who coveted the property tried to make her a ward of the state. It brought out the witch in her.

"The Witch of Sulphur Mountain and Other Idylls" began taking shape in my mind. But then her story just kept growing and growing, getting more and more supernatural. Sensing she was the starring witch, like the lead singer in an all-girl rock band, she got too big for her witches, and demanded to have her own standalone book, “The Witch of Sulphur Mountain: The Supernatural Life of Agnes Baron, Meher Baba’s Beloved Watchdog.”

Thus “Sulphur Mountain: Idylls of Time Past” is the book “The Witch,” if not the Witch, had every intention of being, peopled with many more poetically idiosyncratic mountain folk. These were idyllic years, and accordingly I chose to sing of them in the form of idylls.

An idyll is variously “a short poem descriptive of rustic life,” “a poem describing pastoral scenes or events or any charmingly simple episode or picturesque scene,” or “a long narrative poem on a major theme.”

I am often asked, “Why go to all the trouble of trying to tell a story as a poem, getting it to rhyme and conform to meter and all that? Why not simply tell the story in prose? And I answer, For the same reason that a painter paints a landscape rather than snap a photo. It’s art. And when you pull it off, it’s a thing of beauty. “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner”; “The Raven”; “The Highwayman”; “The Canterbury Tales”; “Idylls of the King”; “The Walrus and the Carpenter”; “Paul Revere’s Ride”; “The Charge of the Light Brigade”; “The Song of Hiawatha.” These are some of the most popular poems in the English language. It is an art and a discipline that once was widely pursued and no less appreciated, but many years since has fallen out of favor. And because “a thing of beauty is a joy forever,” I wish to do my small part to keep that beauty alive.

Also, times were when stories and poems were generously, even lavishly illustrated, and highly appreciated. In keeping with this, I have accompanied all but two of the thirty-two idylls with a photo or illustration.

Few will have the pleasure of setting foot on Sulphur Mountain, but it is my sincere hope that, in setting eyes on "Sulphur Mountain,” you will come away with many an idyllic impression of a place in time, a time past.