Some Lessons From California

Judy and I are wending up the Rogue and Klamath River Valleys today, with a detour over to Crater Lake National Park. We spent four days in parts of Redwood forests from Marin County up to Humboldt County. We visited the Avenue of the Giants area and walked all the nature paths through scores of groves of some of the tallest living Redwoods.

Our nine days in California started in earnest with parts of four days in Sacramento and its northeastern suburbs. While we were there to watch our daughter compete in and win an NCAA national championship, we were able to see a lot of the area from our rented RV windows, from light rail trains, and from walks and hikes.

Fuel prices for regular gasoline in California were always above $4.00 per gallon. The most we had to pay was $4.56, near Crescent City. In Sacramento, we observed five-mile-long lines of morning commuters, many in their SUVs and oversize pickup trucks, one person per vehicle, edging toward work at a couple blocks per minute.

After Sacramento, we were ready to keep as far away from California's enormous and ponderously inefficient cities as possible.

In the mountains near Clear Lake, near the Point Reyes Wildlife Refuge, near Willets, and now, near Grant's Pass, we've talked with people running resorts, recreation-oriented businesses, and RV parks, noting that business is down quite sharply this season. West and northwest of the Sacramento River Valley, it has been a fairly chilly, and extraordinarily windy spring. At the wineries we visited, people commented on how the drying and bouncing effects of the winds , combined with coolness of the air, will make 2008's grapes unique.

The Pacific salmon closure, that extends up all three contiguous coastal states, will have a devastating effect on many communities. I've yet to read an article on this in the local papers or hear one on the radio that approaches this longtime-coming problem holistically. Part of the reality of that shortcoming is that there are aspects of the problem nobody yet knows.

Part of the reason we'll be going into the upper Klamath River Valley today, is because I want to look at some of the ranches that have had such an enormous political and environmental impact on the life of that river - Ishkeesh, in Karuk - and upon its First People, whose heritage has been hijacked by powerful interlopers. Once again.

Here's a description of the Ishkeesh watershed, as it once existed:

It once contained over 350,000 acres (1,400 km²) of marshes, wet meadows and shallow lakes, major runs of salmon and steelhead, and enormous numbers of migratory birds.[7] Irrigation development drained some eighty percent of the region's wetlands, with resulting loss of natural water storage, water filtering capacity, and overall biomass.

For example, the area's once-mighty flocks of migratory bird and fish runs have similarly declined to fractions of their former size. Large areas of Upper Klamath Lake have been lost to agricultural development, while below Klamath Falls, Oregon, most of Lower Klamath Lake and Tule Lake were also drained for agriculture.

Spending most of our time here outside of cities, and witnessing lizards, snakes, birds, deer, elk and other animals in this potentially rich habitat, has brought me to thinking about several things. One of my very favorite - among many favorites by the author - of Farley Mowat's books, is his 1984 masterpiece of ecological polemic, The Sea of Slaughter. In it, Mowat describes the rich natural environment of the Northwest Atlantic at the time of the coming of the Europeans, and their utter destruction of 90% of the wildlife.

I wonder if somebody has written or is writing a West Coast version of Mowat's chronicle?

Driving and hiking through the last 8% of the Redwoods, hearing loggers complain about environmentalists keeping them from cutting down the rest, seeing rusting logging railcars disintegrating on abandoned multi-line sidings next to condemned logging mills; seeing large fishing boats decaying at their berths in unpainted, musty harbors, helps me realize that Alaskans aren't alone in seeing our ways of life creak and groan under enormous pressures of change.

We are fortunate in being in a far better position than Californians in steering our destinies in the far north far clear of the rape and ruin we're witnessing down here. As critical as I've been on these pages of Ethan Berkowitz, I must say, his descriptions of hopes for our future, and those of visionary progressive Diane Benson, bode far, far more for future solutions than do the vacuous promises of Sean Parnell and his supporters among the minions of The Club for Growth, Americans for Tax Reform, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

images:

Judy in the Redwoods

Salmon Fishing is Closed Until further Notice

Carab and clam shells on the outside bech of Arcata Bay