Catalina Beauty and the Odd Beast or 2

Gertrude the Goose was furious. She had waddled laboriously across her pasture to the fence. It is not easy for Gertrude because she has a congenital defect that keeps her earthbound and causes her wings to drag along the ground, slowing up her goose walk, which at best is not a ballroom glide. She had seen Doug Propst stop by the fence in his truck.

Doug is president of the Catalina Island Conservancy and Gertrude’s nominal master, if anyone can be said to be master to the independent Gertrude.

Audrey Ann Marie Boyle and I were with Doug at Middle Ranch, where he and his wife, Joannie, live atop the rugged backbone of Catalina Island. Audrey Ann Marie got out of the truck and started toward Gertrude, apologizing as she went for not having any refreshments. Gertrude hissed like a teakettle, swung around like a foundering sailboat and stalked off.

Doug explained where she came from. “Joannie and I were on a cattle drive and the cattle won. On our way home without the herd, we were mad at each other, each one blaming the other for our futile outing. Then we saw this goose gimping along and one of us said, ‘Well, let’s see if we can round up one lopsided goose.’

“We encouraged her along and she has lived in this pasture ever since. She’s totally spoiled and so is her pasture mate, the pig, Grunt. The Inland Motor Bus Tour stops with a full load of passengers and the people feed the animals. Doughnuts and breakfast rolls, mainly. All the animals know the sounds made by the different vehicles that come down the road. Usually they don’t even look up for me, but she thought you were possibilities.”

Grunt looks like an immense cocktail sausage with toothpick legs.

At the top of the pasture, three retired ponies were standing peacefully in the sunshine. They are alumni of Joan Propst’s Pony Club troop. She teaches youngsters to ride. They learn to take care of their own tack, to take care of their ponies’ feet and to watch the general health of their mounts. The members of the Pony Club are young girls from 10 to 15.

Another group that rides under Joannie’s supervision is COBRA--Catalina Old Broads Riding Assn.

Doug, who is a perfect host, showed off the beautiful island for which he is a superb steward and introduced us to another resident of the high country. We passed a beautiful meadow, graced with a Catalina ironwood tree, found nowhere else in the world; two twisted oaks, their gnarled limbs pointing every direction, and a handsome herd of beef cattle calmly eating oat hay. In their midst was a young adult buffalo. Doug said, “I don’t know what a buffalo psychiatrist would say, but that’s a mighty confused buffalo.

“She was an orphan and we put her in with the beef cattle. She was raised with them and now she’s sure they’re her family. She has had dozens of opportunities to join a buffalo herd but she looks at them as if they were some strange breed. She went off by herself last spring and had her calf. Obviously, she had spent some time with an especially persistent suitor.

“She brought her calf back to rejoin her friends but we had moved them while she was gone, never expecting her to come back. She couldn’t find her friends and she was frantic. She finally found them and settled right back in. When it was old enough, her calf left with a bunch of buffalo. Not this buffalo. She seems to feel that maybe some animals are confused but she’s not. She’s part of a beef cattle herd.”

In 1972, members of the Wrigley family formed the Catalina Island Conservancy, dedicated to preserving the island as it has been through time since the friendly Gabrileno Indians were there in 1542 to greet Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo and, 60 years later, Sebastian Vizcaino, who named the island.

The conservancy now protects most of Catalina Island’s interior and 48 miles of its coastline. It is charged with protecting native plants and animals, many of which grow nowhere else. It maintains the roads and maintains the Airport in the Sky, a beautiful towered mission-style building on the top of the island.

Doug showed us the conservancy’s newest project, a nature center near the airport. There are displays showing the flowers, trees, shrubs, animals and birds that are native to this ancient island.

We saw the first diorama in miniature, which pictures everything from the beautiful wildflower St. Catherine’s lace to a little snake that probably hitchhiked from Santa Barbara on a log. The artist is Evie Templeton and she starts soon on the full-size diorama.

In a store window in Avalon, I saw a placard advertising cruises to Two Harbors on board the Blanche W. When my husband, Doug, and I had the boat called the Money Tree, I would see the sturdy launch called the Blanche reliably round Blue Cavern Point and head for the pier.

I told our son Tim that the good old Blanche was still making the run to Two Harbors and he said, “I used to go down and unload the milk and the newspapers when the Blanche came in.”

Now, some other lucky 14-year-old is working for Doug Bombard, who runs Twin Harbors, and the new kid runs down to unload the milk and the newspapers just as Tim did in those clear blue, salty summer days.

Catalina is a slice of forever, blessedly resting in the Pacific. Each time I go there, I am thankful for the happy chance that brought us those long summers tied to a mooring in the last fairway, just around the point from Fourth of July Cove.