I MUST HAVE BEEN about 10 years old when I first glimpsed the Cuyama Valley. My family and I were driving home from my aunt’s place in northern California when, about two hours north of Los Angeles, my father spontaneously decided to turn off the main highway. What I most vividly recall, almost three decades later, was realising that I was suddenly somewhere quite different from anywhere I’d ever been.
There were windswept plains, beautiful and desolate, flanked by two mountain ranges—one deeply creased and barren, the other scrubby and oaky, golden and green. Very occasionally, we saw signs of human habitation along the two-lane road. It was as though we had stepped not merely back in time but
