Opal Lives in Opal Canyon

It was a song that started it. “Opal,” by Dave Stamey, and released in 1999.

After hearing the song several times over the years, it was in 2010 that I began the hunt to find the couple that was the subject of the song. It would take me nearly four years.

“Opal lives in Opal Canyon,” is the first line of the first verse. I talked to old-timers across Nevada and the Eastern edge of California, hoping to learn if anyone knew Opal or where the canyon might be.

Finally, one 88-year-old miner pointed me to the northern edge of the Mohave Desert in California.

“There’s a canyon called Opal about 45 miles west of Lone Pine,” he said. “But don’t ask me to recall how to get there.”

He did know that a woman and her husband had lived in a trailer in the area and that he was a pocket miner. It was the best lead I had had in months of searching.

Taking U.S. 395 south of the Nevada-California border, I pulled into Lone Pine. A man at the hardware store pulled out an old folding map and pointed to Opal Canyon, showing a thin line of a road leading there.

Armed with this knowledge, I headed north about a mile, turned right off the highway onto a well-graded dirt road, and headed southeast into the high desert. What had started as a relatively smooth track turned into a washboard full of three and four-inch rocks jutting from the ground.

Eventually, I had to stop, pulling to the side of the road because it had reduced to a four-wheeler paradise. I grabbed my pack, buckle on my sidearm, and Ka-bar knife and proceeded on foot.

By 4:30 p.m., the sun was beginning to hide behind the peaks to the west, and I decided to set up camp for the night. Shortly after sunrise, I was back at it, hiking to Opal Canyon.

It was nearly noon when I saw the glint of silver reflecting in the sun. A few hundred more steps and there was the upper-front bubble of an old Airstream that had seen better days. The old trailer was sitting on blocks some 75 feet up a small gully.

As I approached the structure, I stopped and hollered, “Hello, the camp.”

A five-foot-nothing, round woman pointing a double-barreled shotgun at my chest greeted me. Feeling obliged, I raised my hands over my head.

“Whatch’ya want?” she barked.

“I’m looking for Opal and Henry,” I answered.

“Whaddya want with them?”

“I’m a writer.”

“A writer?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Whatcha write about?”

“Anything and everything,” I answered. “Right now I want to do a story on Opal and Henry.”

She stood there in the shade of the trailer for a half-minute before saying, “Okay, put yer arms down and come on in. “Bout to have some coffee, you too, if ya like.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said nervously, still a bit taken aback by having a gun aimed at me.

“Tell me what this is all about,” she said as she poured coffee into two old battered metal cups.

“So, you must be Opal, and this must be Opal Canyon,” I said.

“Yup. But there ain’t no Henry, no more. Went looking for the place he had found gold the day a’fore and never came back. Guessin’ he got hisself lost and died back there somewhere. We never found him.”

I sipped at my coffee, a miserable-tasting brew, swallowed, and said, “I have something I’d like you to hear.”

From my pocket, I withdrew my cell phone.

“That’s one of them wireless phones, ain’t it?” she asked. “Haven’t seen many of them, beside I have no use for one up here.”

I selected my music app, opened it, and pressed play.

As Opal listened to the song, a toothless smile crossed her face. I could tell she recognized the story.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” she exclaimed. “I never knew anyone wrote a song about us. It’s pretty much true, ‘cept the teeny-weeny waist part and me rubbin’ his feet.”

We both laughed at that.

The song got her talking. She had lived in the same spot since 1956, coming to the canyon when she was 37.

“Left a good payin’ bank job to come to live up here,” she said. “Haven’t ever wanted to leave since.”

After several hours of talking, her giving me a show-and-tell presentation about her property, and a short hike up the mouth of the canyon, it was time for me to say goodbye. She also showed me where ol’ Roy, the “one-eared hound dog,” was buried alongside the “calico cat.”

Before I left, I asked if she needed anything from town.

“Nope, gotta neighbor lives about three-quarter a mile that way that gets me stuff when I need it,” she answered.

“Take care, and thank you for the hospitality and the conversation,” I said as I hefted my pack onto my shoulders.

“Thank you for lettin’ me hear that song,” she smiled.

It would be a long walk back to my truck and another night sleeping in a cold camp. I couldn’t help but feel sad knowing that her being ninety years old at least, I would never see Opal again.