I was thirteen the first summer I volunteered at Willfell, and I went back every summer after. Kathy owned an acre of hillside land off Skylark Road, just west of town, a fifteen-minute walk from my father’s house. The shelter was a non-profit funded solely by donations, with an all-volunteer staff. She went to church with the lady who ran the place, a retired park ranger named Kathy. It was my step-grandmother who told me about the Willfell Animal Sanctuary.
JUNIPER VALLEY PARK TV
The nearest library was almost as far, and the rabbit-eared TV picked up three channels: local access from Palmdale, the Bible channel, and assorted infomercials. My dad and stepmother worked, my half-siblings went to summer school, and my friends were seventy miles away. My months in Juniper Valley became skull-crushingly boring. On moonless nights it seemed depthless, and I felt as though it could be a kilometers-deep well. I’d look out my bedroom window at the lake, below the dim circles of light cast by the two street lamps on Skylark Road, pitch-black like a tar pit. Lake Collette would remain a proper body of water then, even in the midst of the hot, dry summer. There were quite a few rainy years during my childhood. During droughts, Lake Collette would drain to a glorified puddle, a mossy marsh of waist-high weeds. It’s a sag pond, right on the San Andreas Fault, which cuts straight through Juniper Valley. Calling Lake Collette a “lake” is also stretching things a little bit. The town resembles a bowl, with Lake Collette at the basin, and streets and houses arranged around the edges, along the slopes of the surrounding hills. Anything else one might need could be found in Palmdale, a 45-minute drive east, through miles of gridded power lines and golden flatland, dotted with silos and scrap metal. There was one general store in town, one gas station, one church, and one dirty little inn with a bar/restaurant. In the ’90s, the population of Juniper Valley and the surrounding hills was eight hundred and change. Though I would hesitate to even call Juniper Valley a “town.” It’s an unincorporated cluster of ranch-style homes planted like a pimple amongst the Sierra Pelona Mountains. He and my stepmother loved it there, loved the isolation and the small-town lifestyle. I stayed in Juniper Valley during the summer, with my father. The cops were clueless all they told us townsfolk was that, due to a bacterial infestation, we were not to swim in the lake until further notice. Whatever government agency was operating behind the blockade, searching the lake, they were gone without a trace by the time the sun was up.Īnd whatever they found, they weren’t telling. I’m guessing Kevin Whitter either chickened out before doing the deed, or else was picked up by the cops as soon as he approached the fence.Īt the end of the three days, some early risers in Juniper Valley reported witnessing unmarked cars heading east on Skylark Road, towards the highway and the air force base and the Palmdale airport.
JUNIPER VALLEY PARK SKIN
The monster had ten legs, the skin of an alligator, and the body of a squid. My little half-brother knew Kevin the kid claimed to have seen unmarked vans and a bevy of sunglass-wearing government agents with automatic weapons surrounding a team of scientists in hazmat suits, dragging the carcass of a monster out of the water. This all went on for three days while some unknown, official body did what needed to be done, then, overnight, the black barbed-wire fence was gone, replaced with one of the normal chain-link variety.Ī few middle school kids dared Kevin Whitter to apply a pair of wire cutters and sneak in. Two of the three local cop cars were stationed 24/7 at either end – one to the east, one to the west. They put up a tall fence covered with black tarp and topped by barbed wire, surrounding Lake Collette at the center of Juniper Valley, so that no one could see what they were doing.