I really enjoyed reading this one as I enjoy all of your articles Gary. Are you sure mountain lions can get up to 250 pounds though? It was my understanding that 150 is a really big male. Not that that's much comfort when confronted by one.

More excellent writing from Gary. Some terrific sentences, terrific moments. I had a similar experience with a large male wolf and lived to tell the tale. Glad Gary didn't become a lion turd. We'd be missing pieces like this.

Wonderful story, but the geese are called Canada Geese, not Canadian Geese.

You are fortunate to have such a place to go to. Good writing.

I was once alone with a bear as you were with the mountain lion. Salutary.

One minor quibble: The fact that jaws snap shut under it does not mean that beauty is "just" a surface phenomenon, not to me. It does mean that beauty is sterner than we, in our Disneyfied apperception, usually think.

I loved this article.

I hope you connect with someone about your apple orchards. I believe that grafts can be made, thereby prolonging the varieties. Apples, alas, do not breed true, but grafting can save the day. [I know, not your thing, but I didn't research whether or not your apple varieties are rare/endangered or both]. Anyway, it was a great article and I thank you!

It really sounds like a beautiful place. I've been lucky enough to experience similar places.

I wish the author would save some seeds from the fruit of those old apple trees. Seedsavers Exchange would take them. They ensure that heirloom varieties are being preserved.

And I count your Uncle David as one of my closest friends.

Much aloha to you and your family.

Dickey Weinkle

Some of the most beautiful landscape in the world. Tuolomne, Calaveras and Amador. Thank you for writing about that land.

Gary, your writing about the ranch is so evokative that I can nearly smell the yellow pines and the brush burning in the meadow. Thank you for a great article.

It was a special treat to be transported back to the Sierra foothills -- I have many wonderful memories of visiting my uncle (a prominent real estate broker) in Arnold since the 80's. I moved to Upstate New York 9 years ago to become a professor, but my heart aches for the California wilderness every day. Your description of the barn, orchard, flowers, trees, and animals reached right inside me and soothed some of the homesickness.

I always look for your articles about the Sierras -- keep them coming. Now I'm going to go straight to the webpage to renew my premium Salon subscription.

My Mother also lives on a pastoral ranch in the Sierra Foothills; my childhood home. One fine spring day a couple of years ago, she observed 3 newly hatched ducklings swallowed whole, one after the other, by one of those beloved "musical croakers".

thank you for the article. it was truly evocative of being out in the country. i am hoping to get out to yosemite this year.

i really enjoy your writing and look for your byline.

I spent a lot of time in Arnold growing up; my family has a house there, and we commuted summer and winter most weekends. I don't usually miss it, but this article brought it all back, both the good and the bad.

The place got under my skin in a big way, the smell of red dirt and conifers and the taste of granite. I haven't been back for years now, since I moved to the Pacific Northwest.

Maybe it's time to go.

a wonderful part of California. Why can't we keep it this way? A horrible lumber company (SPI?), I've blotted the name out of my brain in a futile attempt to forget about its damage, is now going to clear cut much of Calaveras forest! Why can't this be stopped? Can't anyone help? These people simply rape the land for profit. Well, I'm old enough to have had a glorious youth in glorious bucolic country, but those of you who will be here long after I have shuffled off this mortal coil will have to answer for and pay for the avarice of big corps and their CEOs. Good luck.