Wanderers in Wonder

Marshal South, Aussie Outback born and raised and his wife Tanya, Russian immigrant, New York City raised, married in the mid-1920’s and decided to live a peaceful more spiritual life in the deserts of Southern California. Both Marshal and Tanya were writers who made modest livings selling articles to magazines and newspapers. In 1930 they loaded their Model T with the basics of life and headed out to the deserts of the Anza Borrego. They found their homesite on Ghost Mountain overlooking Blair Valley. All the necessities of life, food, water, building materials had to be carried up a primitive trail of three quarters of a mile with a 1200 foot gain in elevation. Tanya would give birth to three children and the children would be raised in their primitive desert home. By 1947 Tanya called it quits. Marshal and Tanya would divorce. Tanya would take the children to Oceanside, CA. Tanya lived to be 100. Marshal died young in 1948…of a broken heart according to some.

The remnants of the South home on Ghost Mountain.

Native American ‘Mortares’…grinding stones near the South family Ghost Mountain home.

Marshal and Tanya may not have found their ultimate Eden, they did find beauty.

THE ANCIENT TRUTH

We may agitate and threaten and declaim,
We may “watch and wait,” and afterwards atone;
But the painful age-old fact remains the same:
That our “dignity” rests on our arms alone.

By the Tigris, by the Tibur, by the Nile,
Through the long and weary ages of the past,
‘Twas the acts of those who “waited,” temporized, procrastinated
That lit the fires of ruin at the last.

For each blood-red sun that ever sank from sight,
Behind a plundered city’s flaming roar,
For each capital laid waste; for each haughty flag abased.
Lies the blame on heedless Peace and not on War.

We may talk of “brotherhood” and of “expense;”
We may blind our eye and put the matter by.
We may live in vapid dreams; in wild Socialistic schemes;
But if our armies fail us—then we die.

The Peace Dove twitters soothingly her song,
The visionary hearks with raptured ears,
Nor heeds the fact—hard proved by ages long—
That Peace Doves build their nests mid naked spears.

Now may we learn the ancient truth once more—
The truth that holds until the world shall cease—
On our battleships and guns; on the nation’s soldier sons,
Rests our only hope of long unbroken peace.

While our might is still unquestioned on the sea,
While our force defies invasion of our coast,
So long, no instant longer, may we hold,
The flag and liberty that is our boast.

 – Marshal South, “Warrior Poet,” April 1914

Marshal heeded the call of former President Roosevelt and organized a troupe of soldiers to prepare for the anticipated battle in Europe. Marshal would serve under John ‘Blackjack’ Pershing hunting Pancho Villa in 1916 – 1917. 

Marshal and Tanya’s three children would all have successful but quiet lives. 

Peace…Wanderers in Wonder.