Where the Skies Are Not Cloudy...

By Robert Ajemian

The Reagans' ranch is their retreat

He calls it Rancho del Cielo--his ranch in the sky--and it is a continent and an era away from the life he will be leading in Washington, D.C. The 688 acres of rugged land nestle in the Santa Ynez Mountains, 2,200ft. above the Pacific Ocean, about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The Reagans raise a few cattle on the isolated spread they bought six years ago, but they use it mainly, and eagerly, as a retreat. And so jealously do they guard their privacy that few outsiders have seen their hideaway. As he looked forward to his Inaugural, the President-elect allowed TIME Washington Bureau Chief Robert Ajemian to spend two days with him at the ranch and to observe the unpretentious and invigorating life that he leads there.

Ronald Reagan lifted the double-edged ax above his head and slammed it into the tree branch lying on the ground. He swung again, his right hand sliding the length of the long wooden handle, and kept swinging for two full minutes. His face glistened with sweat. He wore amber sunglasses; earlier he had removed his contact lenses because the flying chips sometimes lodged behind them. In his faded denim shirt, leather gloves, scuffed boots and cowboy hat, he looked fit and even young. His breathing now became a little heavy, and he put down the ax.

He was completely at home. "This is where I restore myself," he tells the few friends he invites here. The ranch is accessible only by climbing seven miles on a switchback road, through gullies and blind turns that drop off sharply toward the water, a drive that still makes Nancy Reagan nervous. Strong winds and fog often roll in suddenly from the sea; at other times the air on the mountaintop is crystal clear and dead quiet, so still that a voice can be heard at great distances.

Now Reagan began picking up the splits of wood, loading them into a cart. His five-room 100-year-old adobe house depends on two fireplaces for heat. He takes pride in keeping his supply of firewood stacked high. "I enjoy the fireplaces here more," he says, "because I know we need the heat."

His favorite riding horse, Little Man, a 17-year-old thoroughbred he raised from a colt, is always here waiting. Only Reagan rides him. Reagan is sentimental about all his animals. Three months ago, one of his dogs, a German shepherd named Fuzzy, had to be put to sleep because of arthritis in his hips, and Reagan had a small ceremony. He fed the dog some final treats, said his goodbyes, and buried him on a nearby hillside next to Rhino, which belonged to his son Ron. Reagan scratched the dog's name on a marker and covered the grave with rocks so coyotes will not dig up the body.

He comes to his mountain to labor, and this afternoon he was far out in the woods clearing one of his riding trails. With an 8-ft. pruning pole he reached high into the drooping branches, poking, pulling, sawing back and forth. For years he has stretched his muscles with a small, rubber-tired wheel that has a wooden bar through its center. Crouched on his knees, Reagan rolls the wheel far out in front of him, back and forth, 30 or 40 times. He even carries it with him on the road.

The trail was finally clear of brush, and Reagan got behind the wheel of his 1962 Jeep and towed the cart of boughs toward the ranch dump. Two dogs, Millie, a black-haired hound, and Victory, a golden retriever, which wears a dog tag marked 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, pressed against his neck. A third, a female husky named Taca, sleeps during the day. Taca is a night hunter, Reagan explained, and she drags home deer carcasses, dead possum and skunk. The husky is so smelly she has to be washed down now and then with tomato juice.

As the Jeep wobbled along the dirt road, a bobcat as big as Victory suddenly came into view, taut and staring, about 50 yards away, and the men in the Jeep hoped the dogs would not notice. Reagan ignored it. He knows the animals well that stalk the brown, dark hills of his ranch. Mountain lions, protected from hunters by California law, sometimes appear striding fearlessly in full view. Last spring a lion cub was discovered sleeping in the Reagan barn and was left undisturbed. That night the mother came and took the cub away.

Bears have turned up around the barn too, and last summer the leather seat of Reagan's tractor was torn up by one. A pair of hawks have a nest across the meadow from the house and constantly glide the sky searching for game. Deer are everywhere and customarily take water at Reagan's man-made pond. He has armed a spotlight at the visitors and watched them standing frozen in the glare. He is not a hunter, although from time to time he has used his pistol on ground squirrels because here they carry disease. He has killed three rattlesnakes on the spread, two with boulders and the third with his foot. Believing he had cowboy boots on, Reagan stomped on the rattler only to realize, aghast, that he was wearing sneakers.

His friends often needle him about being a frustrated cowboy, and they are right. A Texas admirer recently shipped him an enormous longhorn steer that weighed over 2,000 Ibs. Reagan, who has a name for everything, called the steer Duke. The animal somehow escaped, and as he drove around this day Reagan was keeping an eye out for Duke.

Deep ruts in the washed-out roads caused the Jeep to tilt sideways as Reagan eased over them. The man next to him in the Jeep was a Government medic assigned to stay at his side. A car bumping along behind was filled with Secret Service men. From tune to time Reagan gazed into the groves of live oaks looking for Duke. He pointed to the bushes he admires, the toyon, a California holly with bright red berries, and the brownish manzanita. He saw some clumps of grease wood and got worked up talking about its dry, grasping nature and how it burns fiercely when set afire by lightning.

He prefers the natural growth and has little interest in raising vegetables. "I like the wildness of this place," he said, speaking eagerly of the numerous wildflowers and their fragrance after a rainfall. He has done a little planting of his own; Eastern lilacs just behind the house, some willows and live oaks, now climbing strongly. He once took a seed from a pine cone, started it in a coffee can and nurtured it into a tree.

From Bald Mountain, the highest point on Reagan's land, you can see 40 miles down the California coast and, in the spectacular distance, five of the Channel Islands. At the other end of the ranch, you look down on the Santa Ynez Valley and gaze over heavy, rolling hills that plunge toward the sea.

Reagan knows the history of his ranch, and as he drew closer to the house he pointed to a distant hill and told how a hundred years ago, a young bandit had been ambushed there. He told of a hanging tree and stagecoach holdups. On the wide hillside across the valley, where the dogs are buried, the Spaniards had cultivated vineyards, long since gone. One day Reagan brushed against the native buckthorn bush, and its berries rubbed off on him. Later, when he washed at home, the juice made a lather and he figured out that the Spaniards had used the buckthorn berries as soap.

As he pulled into the yard Reagan glanced toward his pond. It used to be a mudhole, and Reagan and his closest friend, Willard Barnett, whom he calls Barney, got a black plastic Liner laid across the bottom. Barney, 67, is a rugged, silver-haired man who used to drive for Reagan when he was Governor and is now like a brother. The pond these days is 11 ft. deep and 100 ft. long, and Reagan calls it Lake Lucky.

The pond is filled with goldfish he put there, and he likes to tell how they grow according to their environment, small in a fishbowl and larger in a pond. His are half a foot long and he attends them carefully. That afternoon a saltwater bird, a gray tern, was circling the fish, and Reagan moved quickly toward the pond. Annoyed, he began tossing stones at the bird each time it landed on the water but could not scare it off. In the past he had come across kingfishers, he said, diving down and spearing his fish, but he had never seen a saltwater bird here. "Bang! Bang!" he yelled several times, and eventually the tern flew back toward the ocean as a satisfied Reagan stared upward at its flight.

The next morning Reagan and his wife were at the horse barn by 10 o'clock. He likes to ride for a couple of hours each morning and work in the afternoon. He saddles the horses himself, cleans their hoofs and, in the past, even changed their shoes. He climbed up on Little Man, still spirited and shrewd enough to open gates with its nose. Reagan had ridden the horse's mother in one of his movies, Stallion Road, bought her and later bred her. A practiced hunter and jumper, he now restricts himself to trail riding. He loves the surprises of the changing landscape: trails that suddenly open to sloping meadows or pitch through thick, rolling woods.

Nancy Reagan, who is not a relaxed rider, went along on her chubby bay named No Strings. They own two other horses, both Arabians, a white named Gualianko and a sorrel named Catalina. Reagan used to raise thoroughbreds and sell them off as yearlings. When he was younger, he had his own system of breaking horses, first with a lunge line in the ring, then lying stomach-down across their backs, all the time emphasizing verbal commands. As he was explaining his approach, he burst into a sing-song chant from his cavalry days: "Walk ho-o!" he cried out. He was silent for a moment. Then he let loose again: "Tro hoo!" he yelled, as if he were back in a movie at Fort Bravo.

Later, Nancy Reagan came out of the house in jeans and bright kerchief, carrying a box of trash. While her husband spends most of his time outdoors, usually with tools in his hands, she is indoors, talking for long periods of time on the telephone, reading, planning. Reagan hates the telephone and is almost grateful that Nancy uses it so often. The ranch is plainly her concession to her husband. She prefers being around people. But time alone with him is worth the remoteness, and she accepts it.

Back at the house Reagan talked about the high country. Western landscapes filled the rooms, a huge gaucho hat hung on a rack, a saddle sat by the wall. "This place has a spell," he said, "and people feel it when they come here."

Reagan first felt that spell in 1974, during his final months as Governor, when a friend, Bill Wilson, took him to the mountain top and the two men rode horseback over the property. Reagan wanted it immediately, even though his financial advisers warned him off, and he put up $527,000 for the land and the ramshackle house (it has since tripled in value).

That fall he tackled his mountain. With Barney and another close aide, Dennis Leblanc, he began driving up from Los Angeles on weekends, carrying sandwiches in a brown bag, working all day and returning that night. They tore off the shabby side porch with its metal roof and framed in a large L-shaped veranda, the room they use the most now. The mountain air was cold that winter, and the fog sometimes so thick they could barely see out the windows. The old roof was pulled away and replaced by red-brown fiber glass tile. One day the wind was so strong, Reagan remembers, that some of the tile and long boards flew out of their hands. Inside they laid a red vinyl floor, working in the chill with small electric heaters to make the glue stick. They set traps trying to kill off the numerous rats and wood mice.

Wherever he traveled around the country in 1976, campaigning for the nomination against Jerry Ford, Reagan thought about his new retreat. In motel rooms he would step off the bedroom and bath to get an idea of room dimensions, and on the plane he drew floor plan sketches. Often he would return exhausted to Los Angeles on a Saturday night, only to leave early the next morning for a day at the ranch. He put up a fence made out of used telephone poles, carting in the 22-ft. lengths and chain-sawing them down to 15 ft. for the rails and using the remaining 7 ft. for posts. He and Barney put in a sprinkler system and hauled in beams that they stained and set across the ceilings.

Talking easily, Reagan moved around the house, stopping once to point out a painting by Clare Boothe Luce of a smiling lion. He took it off the wall to show her inscription on the back, turned over the painting and was astonished to find a live bat, mouse-size and squirmy, clutching the frame. Reagan poked at it with his finger. He recalled another bat that had made its way into the house a couple of years earlier. With Nancy howling in the background, he and Barney had chased that one with a broom and got it out alive. This afternoon Reagan calmly took the painting to the door, flicked it and watched the bat spread its wings wide and fly off.

In the mornings on the mountain, Reagan wakes up without an alarm around 8 o'clock, dresses right away and takes coffee at the veranda table. He gets going slowly, sitting in the morning sun, eating his breakfast, reading, looking out on the meadow. He usually has orange juice, some dry cereal covered with fruit, or maybe a couple of soft-boiled eggs prepared by the family cook, Ann Allman. By her own account, Nancy has no cooking skills.

A big school bell calls Reagan to meals. He is an indifferent eater, seldom asking what is to be served, but always finishing whatever is on his plate. He likes soups, and the cook often freezes his favorite, a spiced hamburger soup, and brings it to the ranch. He is also fond of desserts, especially apples and ice cream. At the end of the day, he takes only a single drink, either a glass of wine or a vodka and tonic. He drinks no whisky. He enjoys making popcorn at night and often sits on the patio, looking at the stars, which are brilliantly sharp. A color TV is located in the living room, and when the Reagans listen to music, he likes pieces from the Big Band era. They usually fall into their king-size bed sometime after 10 o'clock and read themselves to sleep.

As he sat talking about his routine, someone drove up with the news that Duke had been found walking along a paved road six miles down the mountain. Reagan was elated. Duke, he said, will go back in the field near the house. "Just looking out at him in that meadow makes me feel better," he said.

Trips to the mountain make him feel younger, and he is always reluctant to come down. Reagan wants to keep using the ranch as much as possible; Air Force One can land at nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base and a chopper can take him to the mountain. "I've only got so many years left," he said recently. Then, in a rancher's plain-spoken way, he added: "The more I use this place, the longer I'll be around." --By Robert Ajemian

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