The Botanists: An Adventure

They had taken the steamer south from San Francisco to Monterey because they had the time, and T.S. could afford the fare, and certain sensitive papers had to be hand-delivered to Captain Webb. They returned by train because it cost nothing and was much faster and more direct if less scenic.

Free train fare? Let us recognize the renown M.K. had already achieved. She forged many expeditions in the Southwestern deserts thanks to the generosity of the railroad companies. She enjoyed the privileges of a general pass allowing her "to ride on anything from Pullman to engine."

The railroads exploited her reputation for publicity. She exploited their infrastructure for science. Yes, a good quid pro quo, this for that.

T.S. stared at her embossed pass.

"You can go anywhere! I like that in a woman."

She laughed.

Luís deposited them and their equipage at the California Northern Rail Road depot in grubby Hollister (60 years before the infamous Hells Angels riot) and returned to Monterey. The botanists sat together in the passenger coach as if husband and wife. Public displays of affection were frowned upon in that era. Hand-holding showed their closeness, as did her leaning on his shoulder while she dozed, and even while awake.

They reached The City just after noon. A hansom cab from the Folsom Street station hauled them to the Academy where they deposited their survey gear and notes. They spoke with the necessary staffers. Hiram Cole ostentatiously escorted them to the street. They faced each other, holding their carpetbags of personal trifles.

"This has been a most wonderful time, sir. May I ask you to my rooms for tea?"

"Indeed you may, ma'am. I am not yet ready to take to my lodgings."

"Sir, if I may be forward... I would invite you to share my apartment. I have an extra room..."

A signal moment of truth, of decision.

"I would be honored, ma'am. But are you indifferent to public reaction? Do you care about tongues wagging at the Academy and in the damned press? You are not exactly an anonymous non-entity. People will notice. People will talk."

"Accompany me, sir." She stepped out toward her home. He walked alongside.

"I am aware of my reputation and my position. I am aware that some think I have worn a widow's weeds too long. I do not think changes in my personal life will much affect my professional life; I control many influences. Gossip will not damage that.

She took a breath. "I am ready for change, sir. Are you ready for that?"

She stopped in the middle of the crowded sidewalk. He froze, too, inches from her. Walkers flowed around them, a colorful mongrel flood of international puzzlement. Their unencumbered hands reached for each other. Their fingers danced.

"I would be honored, ma'am." Their eyes telegraphed messages. They walked on, hand-in-hand, carpetbags swinging beside them.

Chan Li stifled chuckles as her mistress and her man entered. Her grin nearly tore her face apart when T.S. posted a note to his former lodgings asking that his belongings be delivered to 525 Dupont Street. She happily arranged the guest room for a man. For this man. For her mistress's man.

Chan Li lit a fire under the water tank and arranged towels, laughing quietly, satisfied.

T.S. bathed first, a quick hot scrub with his favorite rough-milled lye soap, the only stuff that expelled every ugly grain from his dirt-encrusted pores. He worked slick suds into his thick hair, still glossy, still deep black at his age. An amazing avalanche of muck poured from his head.

The dark flow startled him. "I need a better hat," he thought.

He drained and scoured the tub. "Don't leave too much evidence," he thought.

He excused himself while M.K. bathed with Chan Li's assistance and walked down the block to a barber for a close shave and tonsorial trim. Days in the wild left a man scruffy and untidy. He judged such would not be suitable in this lady's home.

A clean-shaven and sparkling T.S. met a sparkling-clean and vibrant M.K. in her parlor. He wore clean city clothes; she was resplendent in a favorite green dress and jacket.

They settled on the spindly Oriental couch. Chan Li brought jasmine tea. They set their field notes on the low side table, a Mandarin masterpiece, and reviewed their survey.

This and that. Fill blanks in the botanical dataset. Propose classifications. Yada yada.

They pushed aside tepid tea and dusty documents. Their hands found each other, as did their eyes. And their mouths. They ignored Chan Li's giggles around a doorway.

They could have returned to the Palace or another fine restaurant but Chan Li insisted they eat at home that night. She cooked something fresh and healthy and spicy, with fish and vegetables and fresh noodles and whatever, accompanied by more fragrant green tea and and yet more giggles.

Chilled white Chablis came later. Cold alcohol takes time to penetrate stomach linings. They were in no hurry. Chan Li lit candles and poured more wine.

The evening passed much too quickly. Energy levels dropped. Bells rang the inevitable twelfth hour. Their lean bodies nestled easily together on the slender parlor couch.

M.K. stirred.

"Time is late, sir. I must retire."

"Time is... almost here, ma'am. The time will be soon."

She held him close. She kissed him deeply. With tongue. With hands on his shoulders, on his back, and then holding his head tight against hers, mouth to mouth, desperately tonsil-dancing, tasting each drachm of his essence, his manly aura. Lost in him. Ruined.

She pulled back. "We are in danger, sir," she whispered.

"We are damned," he replied. "But I fear no fiery pitchforks."

"Will you take to your bed, sir?" Her eyes nearly bled.

"Will you take me to your bed, ma'am?" His eyes smoked.

"The time is now, I believe." Her internal clock spun forward.

The time for anticipation had passed.

Remember their "first date" at the Palace? They had 'dated' many times since then. No, she did not "put out" on a first date, or even a second. But she was tempted.

And now... now was the time.

Their first night was incredible. Following nights were even better. They taught each other much about their bodies; they fit perfectly, eventually. She told him what she wanted. He obliged. She screamed quietly. Chan Li giggled often, reveling in their lust.

And T.S. replenished his stock of Reverend Treynor's Miraculous Protectors. Condoms seemed a prudent idea until and if they married.

The guest room was a convenient place to store his modest belongings. More arrived, with time. He settled in for life with her. But he never slept in the guest bed. He never needed to. Chan Li sometimes complained to herself about her mistress's untidy and sweat-smelling bedroom. Oh, the extra work! But she was almost as happy as M.K.

M.K. maintained a vast, Brobdingnagian correspondence. She wrote constantly to family, friends, colleagues, donors, editors, researchers, antagonists. She introduced a new phrase into letters to her close sister and closest friends: "...madly in love," was her wording.

They became known. They were no secret. Colleagues and nosy busybodies smirked. Newspapers gossiped about them. San Francisco, the Athens of the West, was still a small town hosting a limited intelligentsia of inbred sociability. Secrets were impossible.

"People their age!" tongues wagged.

"Have they no shame?" mouths frowned.

"A handsome pair," their friends promoted.

"She looks well-fucked," faces smirked.

And they were, she did, and was.

But their careers, although linked, were still their own. Each was committed to certain expeditions, certain scholarly conferences, where the other could not accompany. He steamed here. She railroaded there. She was occupied with publication and academic politics, with shaping the Academy, with good science, with truth. He was filled with field work and scholarly follow-ups. Busy busy busy.

They published. They analyzed. They taxonomized. They broke Harvard's headlock on American botanical scholarship.

They won. And they had only begun.

Years passed. Benjamin Harrison succeeded Grover Cleveland as President of the USA. Financial and labor turbulence shook the nation -- strikes, riots, insurgencies, market collapse. The frontier shrank to nothing; it would be declared dead next year, in 1890.

M.K. instigated and led a Botanical Department and Garden at the University of California across the bay in Berkeley. She pushed rigorous publication programs in both Berkeley and the Academy. She demanded the most scrupulous scientific standards. Sloppy botanists rightly feared her fierce pen.

She traveled to San Diego when T.S. returned from a long Baja California expedition.

He was tired and filthy. She personally scrubbed his cruddy hide and then took him to her bed. They reunited. Pillow talk followed.

"Ma'am, I received a wire when I was in La Paz, down in Baja. A wire from Boston."

"Yes?" She had peeled off the French Letter and stroked his cock to revive him. She stroked with her fingers this time, not her tongue. She knew finger and tongue work. Her first marriage and sinful her time with T.S. had taught her what men like.

"Yes. I have come into an inheritance. A substantial inheritance. Enough for financial independence. I no longer need to subsist on the Academy's paltry remittances."

"Yes? And?" She did not bend to tongue his cock, but his nipples were within range. She nipped one, then the other, and laughed silently when he twitched.

"Ma'am, you discomfit me! Please wait. This is important."

"Yes? And?" She took his anxiety as invitation. She bent low and gave his cock a quick wet slurp.

"Oh fuck! Pardon my French, ma'am, but really..."

He lost his train of thought. Maybe because he was balls-deep into his woman's mouth. Oh fuck...

She expelled him with an audible POP! and looked into his eyes while fondling his testicles.

"Yes? And?" Her evil smile glowed.

"If I may, ma'am. I am now in a position to support a household in a suitable manner. I wish to make our relationship more permanent. Ma'am, will you do me the honor of becoming my lawfully wedded wife?"

She started. She blinked. Her eyes teared. Her mouth tightened, then opened. She inhaled his cock again, and again, and again, and applied her tongue forcefully, skillfully, scientifically, and squeezed his bloated balls, and licked her finger and slid it into his anus, and stroked his prostate with medical skill until he erupted like Vesuvio in full Plinian blast.

She swallowed every creamy steaming drop, her blue eyes locked on his grey orbs throughout. She pulled his penis from her mouth and licked every square millimeter with academic precision. Her eyes recaptured his.

"Yes, sir, I shall," she said, and consumed his cock yet again.

"Why us?" they sometimes wondered. Maybe because she was the most challenging, accomplished woman he had ever met. Maybe because he was the most calm and self-possessed accomplished man she ever knew. Or maybe it was merely chemistry. (As though interpersonal chemistry is ever 'mere'.)

They surprised their friends with a small, quiet wedding on 29 May 1889 CE, a clear, mild San Diego day. A greater surprise: They announced that for their honeymoon they would walk 600-odd miles to San Francisco, botanizing along the way.

"Are you sure of this, sir?"

She herself had no doubts. Months alone with her man! Outdoors! Paradise!

"Sure as shootin', ma'am" he drawled dryly, drawing the words out to eleven laughingly distorted syllables.

They were in luck. The next three months would be cooler than normal, a blessing in California's scraggly Mediterranean climate of wet winters and hot, dry summers.

The intimate wedding was celebrated by only a few family and local friends. M.K. was very close to her little sister Susan and Susan's husband Samuel Stockton in nearby Ramona; their young children served as ring-bearer and flower girl. Colleagues were not invited.

Neither were very religious. A Unitarian marryin'-buryin' man sufficed for the service.

They left the Neapolitan bay of San Diego on the first day of June, two lean and lithe adventurers in their early forties dressed in rough field clothes, leading their grumpy burro Sancho laden with supplies, notebooks, plant presses, maps, the simplest of campware, and extra-thick blankets for a ground pad -- to soften their lovemaking.

Their chosen route was fortuitous. They did not know it would later be identified as the San Andreas Fault zone. Geologists had already noted the peculiarity of the area. Peculiar geology often engenders peculiar plants. The botanists followed the hints.

They followed the old Butterfield Stage Line route east through cut-throat ravines decorated with spiky cacti, spindly red ocotillos, thin leafy mesquites and palo verdes, olive-drab jojobas, and mystic grey smoke trees, to the far side of the peninsular ranges T.S. so loved. They traced northward along the west edge of the great barren Salton Sink. They generally stayed around sea level, hundreds of feet above the trough's depths, but did not hesitate to climb up or down to inviting prospects.

-----

A tale is told of the old Salton Sink -- a tale of the Lost Ship of the Desert.

Two galleons sailed north from Acapulco in May, 1532 CE, only forty years after Columbus first landed in the Americas. The expedition was charged by the Viceroy to seek whatever riches could be found. They found riches a-plenty in easily located coastal veins of gold and silver and especially in fecund pearl oyster beds. Coastal Indians traded baskets of pearls for cheap mirrors, steel knives, and Venetian glass beads. The northbound ships' holds were soon laden with wealth.

One crew mutinied. They ran their ship ashore and vanished with heavy loot into the rugged Sierra Nevada Occidental range somewhere around Cañon del Cobre. Precious metals and pearls appeared in the crafts of the inland Tarahumara Indians of that time.

The other ship continued north along the Sea of Cortez a.k.a. Gulf of California, past today's upper shoreline. The primeval gulf extended beyond what is now Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs. Ocean waves washed the feet of two-mile-high Mount San Jacinto and Mount San Bernardino and the throat of Whitewater Pass, that deep razor-slash dividing the steep Peninsular and Transverse Ranges.

The scout ship had just turned south for the return voyage to Acapulco when they felt a strong oceanic swell, a surge caused by a massive earthquake along the lower San Andreas Fault. They sailed south for two days -- and encountered a broad sandbar. The neritic shoals of what is now the Imperial Valley had raised several fathoms. The northern end of the Gulf was a landlocked inland sea.

The ship was trapped.

What to do? Only barren desert edged the sea east and southward. Northern and western shores at least sported vegetation and hopefully trails to the Pacific coast and possible rescue. The crew took what valuables they could, regretfully scuttled the treasure ship, and disappeared into the Santa Rosa Mountains.

No streams flowed far into the Salton Sink. Blocked, the new sea dried to its vast depths. Blowing alkalai sand covered the treasure ship. Today that ship probably lies under the pesticide-laden toxic waters of the Salton Sea, "America's Dead Sea," formed by human fuckups in 1905.

The trough was bone-dry when the botanists trekked by on their 1889 stroll. Maybe they could have found the ship. They were not looking for such treasure nor for Pegleg Smith's lost gold mine. Flora were their reward. Life, the simple joy of life under desert skies, the sweet dawns, fierce blue noons, red silk sunsets. The desert's clarity.

-----

This was known territory for both. They knew where to find water wells and food and settlements when needed. They collected many plant specimens. They filled more than a few plant presses. The poor burro's sidebags threatened to overflow.

No problem. They reached the Southern Pacific Railroad depot at Indian Wells a.k.a. Indio, the line's halfway point between Yuma and Los Angeles, and shipped their raw collections to the Academy. (What did Indio look like then? Think of the town in HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, only nastier.) They bought new notebooks and reloaded their plant presses with fresh paper. A brief stay at the bare railroad hotel provided clean baths and laundry. Liverymen groomed grumpy Sancho. They continued up and onward.

They stopped to sample mineral waters at Desert Hot Springs and then trekked over the deep, narrow slot of Whitewater Pass. Past the Santa Rosas and San Jacintos with their origami folds of siennas and mochas and tans. On through the twisted, tortured Badlands below Yucaipa. Down to the Mormon settlement of San Bernardino.

They rested beside a shallow pool under a lonely clump of gnarled cottonwood trees on the grim railroad town's tawdry outskirts. Sancho quenched his thirst and nibbled at sparse greenery. Sere mountains loomed high above them.

"Are we filthy enough yet, sir?" she teased.

M.K opened her perspiration-drenched shirt and offered her mature breasts to her serene husband. He leaned in for a taste test. His long tongue surveyed each wide areola and insistent nipple.

"Yes, ma'am, I do believe we could use sanitation. But let me double-check, please"

He licked again. His tongue gathered her sweaty coating -- hot, salty, dirty. Lovely. He suckled, deeper, harder, one beautiful soft peach and then the other, and back.

"Oh, sir..." she moaned. She pushed him away. "I am sure you are correct. But science requires independent verification."

His shirt was already off, soaked in the pool, wrung out and hung to dry on a low choppy branch. She leaned to lick at his nipples. Damn, he loved when she did that!

He twitched. She laughed. "Yes, sir, we are indeed filthy enough." She bit softly.

They moved on after a bit of healthy filthy sex, on to the foothills above the town.

The Arrowhead Springs Hotel offered a splendid respite from the trail. They cleaned and loved each other quite thoroughly. They rested for a lazy day, sitting on the grand veranda overlooking the region, sipping fruity drinks, chatting, sketching, and plotting.

They made a brief botanical survey of Waterman Canyon up to the huge arrowhead emblazoned on the mountain face. They hired horses and rode higher, on to Lake Arrowhead and The Rim Of The World, a mile-high sheer escarpment overlooking the San Bernardino and Los Angeles basins. The ever-present haze over Los Angeles (the Chumash Indians' "valley of smokes") thinned enough so they could dimly see Santa Catalina Island protrude a hundred miles southwest.

Time to move on. Pack up complaining Sancho. Walk over iconic Cajon Pass to the southern edge of the Mohave Desert. Walk west along the sharp dry edge of the peninsular ranges, and up to well-treed Tejon Pass above the Grapevine. (You may have heard of the Grapevine in the song HOT ROD LINCOLN.)

They camped on the far side of a forested lake away from the Grapevine's wagon road. No human eyes saw their wet, writhing bodies.

Newlyweds seem to have a habit of 'christening' their homes -- fuck on every available surface and in every room. For M.K and T.S., the western outdoors was home. They christened every convenient boulder, pool, meadow, campsite, and log.

They sometimes frightened the wildlife. Too bad.

"You have never explained those scars, sir." She pointed at his naked torso.

"No, I have not," he agreed. And he would not. He was not proud of them.

He rubbed her rough ankles. "You have endured enough damage yourself."

Her breasts bounced when she shrugged. "We know the costs of our lives."