George Cannon Lambert's homestead was located up against East Mountain, just below the three mines and on the broad delta that fans out from the mouth of Box Elder Canyon.
In that unyielding landscape of sagebrush, scrub oak and stoney ground, he built a haven that echoed a bit of England. The house was small, only two rooms and a basement, but it looked out over a vista that made it seem like a manor house.It must have taken years to clear the land. Just looking at the heavy stones that make up the long walls is enough to make your back ache.
Over the years, however, the walls have deteriorated. Camouflaged by oak and sagebrush, and dismantled here and there by people who have taken the stone for every conceivable purpose, the walls have slowly faded.
I remember as a kid walking up through Lambert's place and the feeling of mysterious enchantment it evoked, though not enough to prevent me from causing my own amount of desecration to the place. I recall one summer with my friends pelting the plaster walls of the old house with rocks, probing its walls with a long iron bar we found lying nearby.
Since then, I wonder how many other kids have "explored" the place. The upper floor is totally caved in now, leaving only a door frame, a window and a single edge of roof line intact, and the basement is half filled with the rubble.
The fruit orchards have long since vanished, leaving only scaly wooden skeletons. But a grove of Trees of Heaven cover the whole upper part of the lane. Every year their prolific roots extend themselves, and near the house, wild yellow rose bushes spread fragrance throughout the collapsed walls and cellar.
But, with time, the poppies seem to have become the most memorable aspect of Lamberts' old stone house. In the early summer they create a profusion of vermillion that explodes in the sagebrush surrounding the place.
On Father's Day, while we were visiting Mom and Dad in Alpine, someone mentioned that the poppies were sure pretty this year. Yes, said someone else, I'll bet they're really something up at Lambert's. So on the spur of the moment we decided to drive up and see.
From far down the slope we could see the poppies blooming in the early evening light more brilliant and profuse than I have ever seen them. Down through the acres of sage, colonies of poppies were spreading like pioneers on a desert pilgrimage. One clump the size of a small building lot had established itself a good quarter mile from the house. In the warm glow of evening its blooms were as radiant as jasper against the dusty blue-gray sage, as if Lambert's legacy were making a run toward the town in a pell-mell explosion of celebration and renewal. This year's rain has been good to Lambert's poppies.
When I think of Lambert and the unsuspected heritage that outlived him, I wonder what will succeed me after I am gone. Looking at his poppies, I realize that it's impossible to know.
How could George Lambert have envisioned at the time he planted them that a cluster of poppies would become such a profound bequest to people he would never meet?
We take such gifts for granted - like the gentle curve of a road that was once a country lane, the delicate blooming of an iris planted on a ditch bank, or a grove of trees shading the corner of a park. For the most part, such gifts are given by people who never knew our names, because they are given years before we are ever born.
And then we give the gifts on again in a thousand different ways without ever realizing that we are giving, or even knowing, really, what the gifts might be, or comprehending who will receive them.