Three Weeks, Three Deaths
July 18, 2006
Driving into the parking lot, our boats stuffed into the back of the pick-up, our conversation ended abruptly with the sight of flashing lights. A crowd of people huddled leaning over the guard rail stretching as far as they could across the expansive space above the water.
Hastily we grabbed our gear, our eyes shifting, not wanting to partake in the drama below the rail. We only wanted to kayak on the South Yuba on the perfect day – the summer solstice. Perhaps if we were fast, we would also be invisible. Nobody would notice us slipping past as we clambered down the rocks to the river, silent and slippery like the brown fish.
Yet we were stopped at the top. You are our first line of defense, he said. You understand the river much better than we. We can’t get down there fast enough. You go. Find him, he said: Blue shorts; In his forties.
A group of three standing on the put in rock pleaded with us with their eyes. Find him please. He is a good swimmer. He swims every day. In a pool. He doesn’t understand the river. Blue shorts, 40 something became a person.
Jason told them he could be stranded on a rock. He said the water is warm. There is a chance. But it was a lie. Everybody knew it. Nobody wanted to say it. How could you say it to those eyes? I remained silent. Very silent as if I were only a ghost too.
My timing was off. We peered behind rocks. We strained our eyes to see below the surface. I pleaded with the river to not reveal the blue shorts. I missed strokes. I scrambled from low in the eddy to avoid slipping away. There is no use pleading with the river. It does not care. It does not stop or ease for anyone’s worried mind.
The river becomes choked with rocks. It drops. We could not pass. Nor could a body supporting blue shorts. The walk around was a relief. He could not be there. I could breathe again. I could paddle on the summer solstice without fearing finding those blue shorts behind every rock.
Cory passed us. He had been crying. He had been there to hear the man cry out for help.
A red helicopter thumped through the canyon. Its rhythm beating between the canyon walls before we could see it.
We paddled. We swam. We basked in the sun on a rock. The river was vividly alive, as were we.
He had not been found when we returned for the truck. They were packing up the tents from the parking lot. People milled around, hushed and somber.
Mark Ray. A piano teacher from Manchester, England. Days later the newspaper article was pinned to the park bench by the guard rail.
The following day, June 22, was my grandmother’s 82nd birthday. I knew it would be her last. Early that morning I called to wish her a happy birthday but she could not come to the phone.
The same group of three as the day before on the South Yuba hiked down to Euchre’s Bar on the North Fork of the American to paddle for two days in solitude. After passing through the first canyon of mossy dark walls, green water flowing over glowing white granite and waterfalls I began to cry. This trip is for my grandmother, I said. To Grandma.
She died nine days later. I never had the chance to speak to her.
Helen Tartol – Giant Gap, North Fork of the American River: for you always
July 4th I returned from Chicago after my grandmother’s funeral. On the fifth I drove across the Sierra Nevada to meet some friends on the West Walker River. Past Lake Tahoe,a garbled and distressed voice mail from Jess. I called when I reached Nevada. It took her three tries before I could understand her words through her tears. Sam died kayaking in Norway. My body went cold. Silent tears.
As I slid my boat into the cold desert river I knew that it was not for me. After a quarter mile of the eleven mile rapid that constitutes that stretch of river I got out of my boat and walked back to my truck as the others continued.
Two days later we paddled on the South San Joaquin. Its beauty is breathtakingly alive. I was the river. The river was me and all of us - including Mark, Grandma and Sam.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Meditations
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Meditations
Again I showed up at the 49 bridge on a perfect paddling day without a boat. The river a milky green ribbon.
Jessica and I spoke on the phone at about 12:30 pm. I was still in my pajamas and drinking coffee. She was dropping her husband, Steve, off to paddle and wanted to know if I wanted to meet her there for a hike.
Once we dropped down from the trail to the river. Steve and his friend were just upstream. They paddled to us and reported time both spent stuck in the same hole.
Back to the bridge after the hike. More paddlers there. Matt. He wanted to hike. I declined. He wanted to watch me take photos. I said no. Just leave. Just leave. Please leave me alone.
On the flat slab of granite Christopher and I stood a year ago I sprawled out on my stomach, right hand dangling in the water until I could no longer press the camera’s button. The strap held the camera to my wrist. The hand red and slow.
Sitting on the slab I waited for my hand to return as I willed the sound, the smell and the feel of being there into my body. But I could not force it to stay.
Foam loitered in corners rising up and down like breath. Remains of something fibrous wound around a bare branch. I worked around them but returned time and time again to the two faceless figures in long hemp robes meditating downstream, melding into the rocks as the sun set, still and quiet. Did the sound, smell and feel meld into their robes to stay?
Meditations
Again I showed up at the 49 bridge on a perfect paddling day without a boat. The river a milky green ribbon.
Jessica and I spoke on the phone at about 12:30 pm. I was still in my pajamas and drinking coffee. She was dropping her husband, Steve, off to paddle and wanted to know if I wanted to meet her there for a hike.
Once we dropped down from the trail to the river. Steve and his friend were just upstream. They paddled to us and reported time both spent stuck in the same hole.
Back to the bridge after the hike. More paddlers there. Matt. He wanted to hike. I declined. He wanted to watch me take photos. I said no. Just leave. Just leave. Please leave me alone.
On the flat slab of granite Christopher and I stood a year ago I sprawled out on my stomach, right hand dangling in the water until I could no longer press the camera’s button. The strap held the camera to my wrist. The hand red and slow.
Sitting on the slab I waited for my hand to return as I willed the sound, the smell and the feel of being there into my body. But I could not force it to stay.
Foam loitered in corners rising up and down like breath. Remains of something fibrous wound around a bare branch. I worked around them but returned time and time again to the two faceless figures in long hemp robes meditating downstream, melding into the rocks as the sun set, still and quiet. Did the sound, smell and feel meld into their robes to stay?
Sunday, January 08, 2006
No Picture Taking
No Picture Taking
Sunday, January 8, 2006
Maidu Ceremony
The Maidu Indians lived in Nevada County before there ever was a Nevada County. They have a history with this river. To begin the New Year I had been invited to attend a Maidu ceremony calling back the salmon to the South Yuba River.
This was an opportunity I accepted with eagerness. It seemed a logical and necessary thing to do to begin reconstructing a usable past of the river - Begin with the people who have known it the longest.
Yet as the day grew nearer I met it with a continued sense of trepidation directly connected to my feelings of guilt. At the root of the guilt was my perceived sense of being a foreign invader taking something for my own use and contorting it to fit into my own contexts and designs.
Feeding this sense of guilt and separatism was a show of Zig Jackson’s photography that I saw in Omaha’s Joslyn Art Museum a few weeks ago. That Jackson also received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute magnified my feelings because of our shared educational origins and therefore in my mind I manifested a heightened personal connection and responsibility to his artistic statements based on a superficial coincidence.
Zig Jackson succinctly describes my unease with a single photograph and relentlessly drives the point home with photographic series entitled Indian Man in San Francisco and Indian Photographing Tourists Photographing Indians. Jackson sits on a park bench in Golden Gate Park wearing a Plains Indian headdress. Behind him bison are fenced in. He had erected a sign, also appearing in several other photographs, next to the bench:
ENTERING ZIG’S INDIAN RESERVATION
Private Property
No Picture Taking
No Hunting
No Air Traffic
New Agers Prohibited
The last restriction was a huge concern to me. I very much want to distance myself as far as I possibly can away from the ‘New Ager.’ Jackson criticizes the tendency for those seeking spiritual guidance to take what they deem fit from his culture and disregard the rest. A just criticism. Our own culture has taken just about all that it could from the Native American culture. I don’t want to be a part of taking more. New Agers Prohibited.
Yet participating in a ceremony like this is a sincere form of acknowledging that the Native Americans have a beautiful belief system that is undervalued and virtually buried by our own culture. How valid is the gesture?
I think of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings after Japanese wood cut prints. Van Gogh’s paintings were created with sincere admiration for an art he had newly discovered that moved him greatly. They were beautiful paintings, but the Japanese characters Van Gogh included were meaningless lines approximating symbols from another culture. The paintings were not Japanese wood cuts, but something that would always remain European painting no matter how much he tried to emulate another culture’s sensibilities.
But how can I be critical of those New Agers I distance myself from when I, myself, just participated in a Maidu ceremony to heal the river and not be a hypocrite? I was a curious ‘tourist’ stepping into a sacred ceremony that I knew nothing about, investigating a gap that I find missing within my own cultural context. I even violated another of Jackson’s prohibitions. I brought my camera. If Jackson were there he could have photographed me photographing Indians and I would have been included in his unnerving series Indian Photographing Tourists Photographing Indians. No Picture Taking.
The ceremony was yesterday morning. We gathered at Edwards Crossing under rain heavy clouds and traveled in a procession to Spring Creek.
My camera hung from my neck. As Bill set up an altar I, through my camera lens, greedily became absorbed with the textures and colors that were being built into something with meaning beyond the objects themselves. But once the ceremony started I experienced it through my own eyes, not a lens.
Standing in a circle we conjured a palpable sense of love and concern for the river. It was powerful and it was real. Three women cried. I knew I was experiencing an expression of connection to the earth, denied to us by our own culture, through people who have been living the connection since arriving here. I know that it exists. I know that it’s a real thing that still exists. There is an ancient lineage honoring the river that has its own language to clearly articulate the connection that so many of us feel but seem unable to adequately express. But it’s still not my language. I don’t feel I can adopt this one that is not my own, even as perfected and honed as it is. But I can remember the feeling of knowing and experiencing a language and a palpable connection that exists for this particular river. I can carry this with me until I find a way to clearly articulate that connection myself.
I wonder if Zig Jackson would condemn me for doing this.
It seems to me that it would be so simple if we had a something of a universal language for this like Esperanto. Then there would not be separations formed by guilt or disdain stemming from appropriating parts of different cultures that seem to have gotten it right. I would not wonder if Jackson would condemn me. I would not feel skeptical and critical of others adopting ceremonies and ideals from various cultures while I simultaneously freely appropriate the things from myriad cultures that work for me. But Esperanto has never taken off in this world as of yet as far as I know. Tensions persist.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Chapter 7, Spring
“When I was quite young I fondly imagined that all foreign languages were codes for English. I thought that ‘hat,’ say, was the real and actual name of the thing, but the people in other countries, who obstinately persisted in speaking the code of their forefathers, might use the word ‘ibu,’ say, to designate not only the concept of hat, but the English word hat…. Each foreign language was a different code, I figured, and at school I would eventually be given the keys to unlock some of the most important codes’ systems. On the first day of my first French course, however, things rapidly took an entirely unexpected shape. I realized that I was going to have to learn speech all over again, word by word, one word at a time – and my dismay knew no bounds….
Some reputable scientists, even today, are not wholly satisfied with the notion that the song of birds is strictly and solely a territorial claim. It’s an important point. We’ve been on earth all these years and we still don’t know for certain why birds sing. We need someone to unlock the code to this foreign language and give us the key; we need a new Rosetta Stone. Or should we learn, as I had to, each new word one by one? ….Sometimes birdsong seems just like the garbled speech of infants. There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly….
…we have been asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mocking bird on the chimney is singing. If the mocking bird were chirping to give us the long-sought formula for a unified field theory, the point would be only slightly less irrelevant. The real and proper question is: Why is it so beautiful? …Beauty itself is the language to which we have no key; it is the mute cipher, the cryptogram, the uncracked, unbroken code. And it could be that for beauty, as it turned out to be for French, that there is no key, that ‘oui’ will never make sense in our language but only in its own, and that we need to start all over again, on a new continent, learning the strange syllables one by one.”
I read that in the laundromat Friday as I waited for my clothes to finish the spin cycle and it has sat pounding around in my head since. It was a new Rosetta Stone for me for why I am doing what I am doing. I thought I understood the river pretty well since I’ve spent so much time with it - I started paddling down rivers when I was 13. But the more I see it from different angles, with different eyes than a paddler, the more I realize I am only understanding the river at the level of the infant who botches speech utterly. I have found that new continent right in my own backyard and am now spending my days trying to learn the strange syllables one by one.
Last night I picked up a book that I had borrowed from a friend long ago because I liked the title, yet I had never before opened it, The Secret Knowledge of Water, by Craig Childs. In bed before falling asleep I read the introduction. Craig Childs was in the Utah desert sleeping next to a flash flood bursting through a slot canyon. In the morning he heard human voices – a woman in her forties – questions posed – questions answered. He rounded a corner in anticipation of surprising the people only to find there was nobody there. Only water. “The voices were part of a complex language, a language that formed audible words as water tumbled over rocks, and one that carved sentences and stories into the stone walls that it passed. I would grow older with this language, tracing its meanings like working back through genealogy. I would study its parts, how different types of canyons varied their conversations. When there was no fluid, as was most often the case, with my hands on the water-carved walls I would read the language like some sort of seer.”
Twice in one week I stumbled upon people writing about the same language I have heard and not yet understood clearly. For a decade Craig Childs follow the source of that voice. He chose to study the language of the water in the desert because that’s where the water is strong and free. There are no dams or diversions muffling its voice. I have chosen a river that many consider to have the most complex plumbing system in the state, and possibly the entire country. I am excited to see where our language study paths cross.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Chapter 7, Spring
“When I was quite young I fondly imagined that all foreign languages were codes for English. I thought that ‘hat,’ say, was the real and actual name of the thing, but the people in other countries, who obstinately persisted in speaking the code of their forefathers, might use the word ‘ibu,’ say, to designate not only the concept of hat, but the English word hat…. Each foreign language was a different code, I figured, and at school I would eventually be given the keys to unlock some of the most important codes’ systems. On the first day of my first French course, however, things rapidly took an entirely unexpected shape. I realized that I was going to have to learn speech all over again, word by word, one word at a time – and my dismay knew no bounds….
Some reputable scientists, even today, are not wholly satisfied with the notion that the song of birds is strictly and solely a territorial claim. It’s an important point. We’ve been on earth all these years and we still don’t know for certain why birds sing. We need someone to unlock the code to this foreign language and give us the key; we need a new Rosetta Stone. Or should we learn, as I had to, each new word one by one? ….Sometimes birdsong seems just like the garbled speech of infants. There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly….
…we have been asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mocking bird on the chimney is singing. If the mocking bird were chirping to give us the long-sought formula for a unified field theory, the point would be only slightly less irrelevant. The real and proper question is: Why is it so beautiful? …Beauty itself is the language to which we have no key; it is the mute cipher, the cryptogram, the uncracked, unbroken code. And it could be that for beauty, as it turned out to be for French, that there is no key, that ‘oui’ will never make sense in our language but only in its own, and that we need to start all over again, on a new continent, learning the strange syllables one by one.”
I read that in the laundromat Friday as I waited for my clothes to finish the spin cycle and it has sat pounding around in my head since. It was a new Rosetta Stone for me for why I am doing what I am doing. I thought I understood the river pretty well since I’ve spent so much time with it - I started paddling down rivers when I was 13. But the more I see it from different angles, with different eyes than a paddler, the more I realize I am only understanding the river at the level of the infant who botches speech utterly. I have found that new continent right in my own backyard and am now spending my days trying to learn the strange syllables one by one.
Last night I picked up a book that I had borrowed from a friend long ago because I liked the title, yet I had never before opened it, The Secret Knowledge of Water, by Craig Childs. In bed before falling asleep I read the introduction. Craig Childs was in the Utah desert sleeping next to a flash flood bursting through a slot canyon. In the morning he heard human voices – a woman in her forties – questions posed – questions answered. He rounded a corner in anticipation of surprising the people only to find there was nobody there. Only water. “The voices were part of a complex language, a language that formed audible words as water tumbled over rocks, and one that carved sentences and stories into the stone walls that it passed. I would grow older with this language, tracing its meanings like working back through genealogy. I would study its parts, how different types of canyons varied their conversations. When there was no fluid, as was most often the case, with my hands on the water-carved walls I would read the language like some sort of seer.”
Twice in one week I stumbled upon people writing about the same language I have heard and not yet understood clearly. For a decade Craig Childs follow the source of that voice. He chose to study the language of the water in the desert because that’s where the water is strong and free. There are no dams or diversions muffling its voice. I have chosen a river that many consider to have the most complex plumbing system in the state, and possibly the entire country. I am excited to see where our language study paths cross.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Goodbye Beatriz
Goodbye Beatriz
Monday, December 19, 2005
Beatriz Terraza’s last Rio Grande article irritated me. At the end she nicely concludes that, 'I have come to see the river as something apart from my own narrow experiences with it – as a living, beautiful thing worth saving. I don’t know what my role in that task will be. But perhaps…seeing my own small place in the river’s web of connections among people is a good place to start.’ Great. It sounds wonderful. I wish more people would see that. But, I have the same feeling I do when I see a cheesy romantic comedy – like I’ve been manipulated and dealt a load of insincerity to go a long with it for the sake of being entertained and made to feel good. There was some conflict, an adventure ensues and at the end, everything works out so neatly and everyone is happy. It’s surface. It’s light and entertaining. It has no depth. It’s really what happens next which has the depth in both the cheesy movie and with Beatriz – the part starts where the story ends is where it starts to get interesting and real. But that’s the part that we’re not shown.
Perhaps I’m being too harsh with Ms. Beatriz. She has brought the river to the attention of many a Texan through her writing, and that is a lot, but I still feel that there needs to be more if she is to conclude her entire month long Rio Grande with a grand, nebulous statement such as, ‘Yup, it’s alive and yup, it’s beautiful. It’s worth saving after all!’ I’m alive. Occasionally I’ve been called beautiful. Should I be saved too?
Saved from what? You? Me? The United States? Mexico? Salt cedars? Its border designation? Pollution? Dams?
With her final statement she has turned her articles from a getting to know the river premise, a beautiful premise on its own, to a weak statement pointing a finger toward conservationism and environmentalism. In the end neither premise was met successfully.
Beatrice’s articles were centered around the people who make the river a central part of their lives. But the river itself took second stage. It seemed only a supporting character to the people she showcased. If she wanted to advocate river conservation, she did so poorly by centering on the people. Instead her writing became a month long personal interest story. We, in general as a nation, know so little about environmental facts and issues. This is largely in part due to the media turning a majority of the few environmental stories they do report into personal interest stories. Those are apparently more entertaining than facts. Beatriz thinks the river is alive and beautiful and is worthy of being saved. We all feel good. But who really cares?
If Beatriz’s aim was to get to know the river itself, she also failed. Instead she got to know some people along the river and their thoughts and feelings about it. I keep thinking back to when Beatriz sat by the river and could hear its voice but couldn’t understand what it was saying. Nowhere in her journalistic retelling of her story does she ever take the time to learn what it said herself. All of her experiences were mediated by someone else – border patrol, naturalists, farmers, park rangers, guides. But I really don’t believe that she has developed an idea of her own personal connection. If so, it’s never identified in her writing.
Before her conclusion, Beatriz includes a query from naturalist Roy Rodriguez, ‘…the main issue with the river is “do people find any value in it? Do we neglect the connection that we have with it?”’
Do we neglect the connection that we have with it?
This is where Beatriz should have signed off. Perhaps we just don’t understand that connection yet. And perhaps, as Beatriz showed me, perhaps primarily we don’t yet know how to go about establishing that connection in the first place.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Beatriz Terraza’s last Rio Grande article irritated me. At the end she nicely concludes that, 'I have come to see the river as something apart from my own narrow experiences with it – as a living, beautiful thing worth saving. I don’t know what my role in that task will be. But perhaps…seeing my own small place in the river’s web of connections among people is a good place to start.’ Great. It sounds wonderful. I wish more people would see that. But, I have the same feeling I do when I see a cheesy romantic comedy – like I’ve been manipulated and dealt a load of insincerity to go a long with it for the sake of being entertained and made to feel good. There was some conflict, an adventure ensues and at the end, everything works out so neatly and everyone is happy. It’s surface. It’s light and entertaining. It has no depth. It’s really what happens next which has the depth in both the cheesy movie and with Beatriz – the part starts where the story ends is where it starts to get interesting and real. But that’s the part that we’re not shown.
Perhaps I’m being too harsh with Ms. Beatriz. She has brought the river to the attention of many a Texan through her writing, and that is a lot, but I still feel that there needs to be more if she is to conclude her entire month long Rio Grande with a grand, nebulous statement such as, ‘Yup, it’s alive and yup, it’s beautiful. It’s worth saving after all!’ I’m alive. Occasionally I’ve been called beautiful. Should I be saved too?
Saved from what? You? Me? The United States? Mexico? Salt cedars? Its border designation? Pollution? Dams?
With her final statement she has turned her articles from a getting to know the river premise, a beautiful premise on its own, to a weak statement pointing a finger toward conservationism and environmentalism. In the end neither premise was met successfully.
Beatrice’s articles were centered around the people who make the river a central part of their lives. But the river itself took second stage. It seemed only a supporting character to the people she showcased. If she wanted to advocate river conservation, she did so poorly by centering on the people. Instead her writing became a month long personal interest story. We, in general as a nation, know so little about environmental facts and issues. This is largely in part due to the media turning a majority of the few environmental stories they do report into personal interest stories. Those are apparently more entertaining than facts. Beatriz thinks the river is alive and beautiful and is worthy of being saved. We all feel good. But who really cares?
If Beatriz’s aim was to get to know the river itself, she also failed. Instead she got to know some people along the river and their thoughts and feelings about it. I keep thinking back to when Beatriz sat by the river and could hear its voice but couldn’t understand what it was saying. Nowhere in her journalistic retelling of her story does she ever take the time to learn what it said herself. All of her experiences were mediated by someone else – border patrol, naturalists, farmers, park rangers, guides. But I really don’t believe that she has developed an idea of her own personal connection. If so, it’s never identified in her writing.
Before her conclusion, Beatriz includes a query from naturalist Roy Rodriguez, ‘…the main issue with the river is “do people find any value in it? Do we neglect the connection that we have with it?”’
Do we neglect the connection that we have with it?
This is where Beatriz should have signed off. Perhaps we just don’t understand that connection yet. And perhaps, as Beatriz showed me, perhaps primarily we don’t yet know how to go about establishing that connection in the first place.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Dam Lurking
Dam Lurking
Sunday, December 11, 2005
The green gate at the entrance of the PG&E road to the Spaulding projects was closed. I parked my truck outside it, gathered my backpack and camera and began walking through the gate. A rectangular sign affixed to the gate told me not to trespass on the PG&E land. I continued walking. Another sign tacked to a tree read the same. I turned around and walked back through the gate the way I had come.
I decided to instead walk down the other fork in the road to the closed campground and boat ramp - through another gate that said that I was welcome to use PG&E lands. Welcome sounded better than trespassing. I figured that once I got to the reservoir I could just make my way along the bank to the dam and that way be in compliance with the signs.
I wandered along the gray stumps of trees lining the receded reservoir bank. Soon I discovered that my way to the dams was thwarted by treacherous looking cliffs and rock walls. But, across a small creek and up the hillside, I could see the PG&E road. I figured that if I climbed the hill to the road, I still wouldn’t technically be trespassing since I didn’t actually walk through the gate where the signs were posted to get there. Faulty logic – I know. I kept mollifying my worried mind that I was on National Forest land anyway, but this is something I had only heard through others and not confirmed myself.
I walked down the deserted road to where I had come last Saturday with the FERC Academy group and stood above Spaulding 1 looking across the dam. I could hear the metal guardrails and gates creak in the wind. Everything else was silent.
Things seemed much more ominous being there without a group or a guide. The tower on the dam and the barbed wire gate leading to a metal stairway seemed prison-like. I hesitated before making my way across the long expansive dam. My heart began to race and I felt acutely that I was not in a natural place. It felt wrong.
My goal was to confidently walk across the dam to the stairs on the far side that lead down the backside of the dam to the faucet that becomes the beginning of the South Yuba River below the reservoir. Then I was to confidently descend the stairs to the faucet. It looked like an easy thing to do last weekend. But having a better look at it today revealed a chain across a lower platform hovering above a ladder thrust into the dam wall that must be scaled to reach the lower staircases. Feeling like a criminal with my racing heart, I opted to stop slightly before reaching the chain. Scaling down a ladder on a dam is not high on my list of things to do. But what made me feel infinitely less comfortable thank thinking of descending that ladder was the knowledge that something like 500,000 acre-feet of water was pressing against the other side of the dam. Since the dam was constructed in the 1890’s, it would appear that the engineering was sound and the water wasn’t likely to come busting through, but logic has nothing to do with fear or anxiety.
Once I made the decision to not go all the way down, I turned abruptly and ascended the stairs with loud ringing steps until I reached the top panting. All I wanted to do was go back the way I had come and leave the reservoir. Once again I hesitated, but then I turned and continued to Spaulding 2 as I had planned.
Spaulding 2’s gates are open for the winter, but the water level is so low that it is dry on either side of the project. I walked across the metal grating with less unease than I flet on Spaulding 1. From the perspective of being underneath the gate doors, the dam gave the feel of being a great meat grinder. It’s a cold and violating looking structure. This is where the water spills into Jordan Creek to meet with the South Yuba during the spring runoff.
After spending time in the silence of the dams I felt depleted. I had no desire to continue to Spaulding 3. I made my way back across Spaulding 1 to the road. In my entire trek to the boat ramp and across the dams and back to my truck I came across no one. The silence and isolation of being on such an engineered landscape was an eerie experience. I longed for a friend. I even longed for a heated confrontation of a PG&E worker. I wanted anything to break the silence of that place.
As I walked back I wondered how reservoirs become such cherished recreation areas. This one provided no solace for me. This past summer I came to the reservoir for the first time for a bachelorette party. We took a boat ride across the water to a secluded campsite. Once there I climbed the bank to the kitchen area nestled within the trees. Never during the entire time I was there did I go down to the water until it was time to leave. I wanted nothing to do with that water which is unusual for me.
It’s not like I haven’t experienced reservoir waters before. Sometimes during the summer I have to work on Folsom Reservoir where the three forks of the American River empty. I don’t have a strong emotion aversion to it, but I also can’t say I like being there. It holds no draw for me, no connection, leaves no impression. I hear no voice of the river in the water. It’s like the water behind dams is silenced. It sits there quietly and obediently until it’s allowed to become itself once again if it makes it to the other side. Then the voice begins again.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
The green gate at the entrance of the PG&E road to the Spaulding projects was closed. I parked my truck outside it, gathered my backpack and camera and began walking through the gate. A rectangular sign affixed to the gate told me not to trespass on the PG&E land. I continued walking. Another sign tacked to a tree read the same. I turned around and walked back through the gate the way I had come.
I decided to instead walk down the other fork in the road to the closed campground and boat ramp - through another gate that said that I was welcome to use PG&E lands. Welcome sounded better than trespassing. I figured that once I got to the reservoir I could just make my way along the bank to the dam and that way be in compliance with the signs.
I wandered along the gray stumps of trees lining the receded reservoir bank. Soon I discovered that my way to the dams was thwarted by treacherous looking cliffs and rock walls. But, across a small creek and up the hillside, I could see the PG&E road. I figured that if I climbed the hill to the road, I still wouldn’t technically be trespassing since I didn’t actually walk through the gate where the signs were posted to get there. Faulty logic – I know. I kept mollifying my worried mind that I was on National Forest land anyway, but this is something I had only heard through others and not confirmed myself.
I walked down the deserted road to where I had come last Saturday with the FERC Academy group and stood above Spaulding 1 looking across the dam. I could hear the metal guardrails and gates creak in the wind. Everything else was silent.
Things seemed much more ominous being there without a group or a guide. The tower on the dam and the barbed wire gate leading to a metal stairway seemed prison-like. I hesitated before making my way across the long expansive dam. My heart began to race and I felt acutely that I was not in a natural place. It felt wrong.
My goal was to confidently walk across the dam to the stairs on the far side that lead down the backside of the dam to the faucet that becomes the beginning of the South Yuba River below the reservoir. Then I was to confidently descend the stairs to the faucet. It looked like an easy thing to do last weekend. But having a better look at it today revealed a chain across a lower platform hovering above a ladder thrust into the dam wall that must be scaled to reach the lower staircases. Feeling like a criminal with my racing heart, I opted to stop slightly before reaching the chain. Scaling down a ladder on a dam is not high on my list of things to do. But what made me feel infinitely less comfortable thank thinking of descending that ladder was the knowledge that something like 500,000 acre-feet of water was pressing against the other side of the dam. Since the dam was constructed in the 1890’s, it would appear that the engineering was sound and the water wasn’t likely to come busting through, but logic has nothing to do with fear or anxiety.
Once I made the decision to not go all the way down, I turned abruptly and ascended the stairs with loud ringing steps until I reached the top panting. All I wanted to do was go back the way I had come and leave the reservoir. Once again I hesitated, but then I turned and continued to Spaulding 2 as I had planned.
Spaulding 2’s gates are open for the winter, but the water level is so low that it is dry on either side of the project. I walked across the metal grating with less unease than I flet on Spaulding 1. From the perspective of being underneath the gate doors, the dam gave the feel of being a great meat grinder. It’s a cold and violating looking structure. This is where the water spills into Jordan Creek to meet with the South Yuba during the spring runoff.
After spending time in the silence of the dams I felt depleted. I had no desire to continue to Spaulding 3. I made my way back across Spaulding 1 to the road. In my entire trek to the boat ramp and across the dams and back to my truck I came across no one. The silence and isolation of being on such an engineered landscape was an eerie experience. I longed for a friend. I even longed for a heated confrontation of a PG&E worker. I wanted anything to break the silence of that place.
As I walked back I wondered how reservoirs become such cherished recreation areas. This one provided no solace for me. This past summer I came to the reservoir for the first time for a bachelorette party. We took a boat ride across the water to a secluded campsite. Once there I climbed the bank to the kitchen area nestled within the trees. Never during the entire time I was there did I go down to the water until it was time to leave. I wanted nothing to do with that water which is unusual for me.
It’s not like I haven’t experienced reservoir waters before. Sometimes during the summer I have to work on Folsom Reservoir where the three forks of the American River empty. I don’t have a strong emotion aversion to it, but I also can’t say I like being there. It holds no draw for me, no connection, leaves no impression. I hear no voice of the river in the water. It’s like the water behind dams is silenced. It sits there quietly and obediently until it’s allowed to become itself once again if it makes it to the other side. Then the voice begins again.
Beatriz's Light Bulb
Beatriz's Light Bulb
Sunday, December 11, 2005
It’s Sunday Morning. I’ve been waiting all week for Beatriz’s latest Rio Grande adventure. She's already moved into Chihuahua, Mexico to a stretch of river called the ‘Forgotten River.’ I guess you need to cover ground quickly in a newspaper column.
The Rio Grande separates Chihuahua from Texas, and it seems to do it quite poignantly. The Rio Grande, like the South Yuba, is heavily plumbed. As the river passes through El Paso it all but disappears. Lining what once was a vibrant river are now ghost towns and salt cedars. The salt cedar can ‘guzzle up to 200 gallons of water a day.’ Mexico is allotted 60,000 acre-feet of water per year from the river but is not permitted to dam the river for agricultural use until the water reaches Coahuila where the Rio Conchos gives its water to the decimated Rio Grande. That’s over 300 miles of no water for agriculture.
Those numbers meant nothing to me until last Tuesday’s FERC Academy. 60,000af/yr seems like a big number… On average, the South Yuba receives 93,000af/yr. 85,000 of that comes within a few months during the spring runoff when Spaulding Reservoir can no longer contain all the water coming from the snowmelt and rains. This is when Spaulding Dam #2 spills. The remaining 9,000af/yr we get comes from the 1cfs faucet at the base of Spaulding 1. In other words, when we’re not getting spring runoff, we’re not getting much water and the majority of the water we do get comes within a very short window.
I can only assume that Mexico doesn’t get its 60,000af/yr in a nice, steady flow either. If they have no water most of the year and no way to hold it when it comes, there’s no way to sustain life – of either the river or the people. On top of that, they have the invasive salt cedars lining the banks hoarding what little water does flow. The people of Chihuahua got screwed. The results are impossible to miss.
It is here that Beatriz makes a connection: Nora-Naranjo Morse of Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico told her that ‘she has come to see the river as “a person, as alive.” She called it a “metaphor for our lives. ‘Cause when the water is ill, maybe we’re ill.”’ Beatriz considers, ‘Where the river is broken, so are the lives along it.’
But people remain living in this region of Mexico. Or if they’ve moved to the United States for more financial opportunities, many seem to return. Beatriz asked Lisset Saenz, a 17 year old living in Van Horn, Texas whether she prefers the United States or Mexico. Lisset said she is happier in Mexico, ‘There’s nothing to worry about here. Van Horn, everybody cares about what you have, and who has more things. Here, everybody is equal.’
This statement made by a 17 year old girl seems so utterly wise. The river is definitely ill, yet the people most affected by the disease are not the one’s who are ill; the society causing the illness in the river is the one appearing to be ill. We hoard things and we hoard the rivers for ourselves. In doing so, we’re far more destructive than the invasive salt cedars.
Seeing a destroyed river and the effects must feel devastating. Our water policies have not only destroyed rivers to this extreme in other countries, but in our own as well – and in California at that. The Owens River on the eastern side of the Sierra once sustained a vibrant community and fertile land until the entire river was diverted to sustain Los Angeles. There must be countless similarities between Chihuahua’s Rio Grande and the Owens Valley in California. These are both drastic examples leading to two river’s severe illness and death, in the case of the Owens River. At what point does a river start to become ill in the first place? Once it starts to become ill do we even have the ability to detect the illness anymore?
Two days after her bleak Mexico experience, Beatriz floated down the Rio Grande in a raft in Big Bend National Park. The river had become a river once again because of the Rio Grande’s confluence with the Rio Conchos. Marcos Paredes of the National Park Service was Beatriz’s guide. His major life decisions have been made in isolation on the river. He fears for its life, ‘What people have got to understand is how we are killing this river. And dead is dead…. There are values that we don’t traditionally look at that we should consider – solitude, quiet, dark skies. How far should we go to protect that?’ Paredes asked when the last time Beatriz went anywhere and did not see another person. Or has she ever? Beatriz replied without having to think about it: no.
I found her answer disheartening. How many people also have not? How can we protect those things Paredes asks about if people have not experienced the value of them? These are not things that can be reduced to monetary values such as the value of water converted to electricity or the value of water sold for agricultural or domestic use. These are the things of unquantifiable value that help heal societal illnesses. The same gap resurfaces…
Beatriz concludes her article: ‘By the end of the day…I am also changed in a way I never expected…. I never considered that this body of water…was a living thing that could die…. I long to return next year and float down other canyons, to savor the feeling I tasted so briefly… - that of being one with the river, of the water in my own body pulling like a magnet toward the river…. I long to see a day when we fix the problems with this river that has provided so much life.’
The light bulb has finally been turned on.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
It’s Sunday Morning. I’ve been waiting all week for Beatriz’s latest Rio Grande adventure. She's already moved into Chihuahua, Mexico to a stretch of river called the ‘Forgotten River.’ I guess you need to cover ground quickly in a newspaper column.
The Rio Grande separates Chihuahua from Texas, and it seems to do it quite poignantly. The Rio Grande, like the South Yuba, is heavily plumbed. As the river passes through El Paso it all but disappears. Lining what once was a vibrant river are now ghost towns and salt cedars. The salt cedar can ‘guzzle up to 200 gallons of water a day.’ Mexico is allotted 60,000 acre-feet of water per year from the river but is not permitted to dam the river for agricultural use until the water reaches Coahuila where the Rio Conchos gives its water to the decimated Rio Grande. That’s over 300 miles of no water for agriculture.
Those numbers meant nothing to me until last Tuesday’s FERC Academy. 60,000af/yr seems like a big number… On average, the South Yuba receives 93,000af/yr. 85,000 of that comes within a few months during the spring runoff when Spaulding Reservoir can no longer contain all the water coming from the snowmelt and rains. This is when Spaulding Dam #2 spills. The remaining 9,000af/yr we get comes from the 1cfs faucet at the base of Spaulding 1. In other words, when we’re not getting spring runoff, we’re not getting much water and the majority of the water we do get comes within a very short window.
I can only assume that Mexico doesn’t get its 60,000af/yr in a nice, steady flow either. If they have no water most of the year and no way to hold it when it comes, there’s no way to sustain life – of either the river or the people. On top of that, they have the invasive salt cedars lining the banks hoarding what little water does flow. The people of Chihuahua got screwed. The results are impossible to miss.
It is here that Beatriz makes a connection: Nora-Naranjo Morse of Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico told her that ‘she has come to see the river as “a person, as alive.” She called it a “metaphor for our lives. ‘Cause when the water is ill, maybe we’re ill.”’ Beatriz considers, ‘Where the river is broken, so are the lives along it.’
But people remain living in this region of Mexico. Or if they’ve moved to the United States for more financial opportunities, many seem to return. Beatriz asked Lisset Saenz, a 17 year old living in Van Horn, Texas whether she prefers the United States or Mexico. Lisset said she is happier in Mexico, ‘There’s nothing to worry about here. Van Horn, everybody cares about what you have, and who has more things. Here, everybody is equal.’
This statement made by a 17 year old girl seems so utterly wise. The river is definitely ill, yet the people most affected by the disease are not the one’s who are ill; the society causing the illness in the river is the one appearing to be ill. We hoard things and we hoard the rivers for ourselves. In doing so, we’re far more destructive than the invasive salt cedars.
Seeing a destroyed river and the effects must feel devastating. Our water policies have not only destroyed rivers to this extreme in other countries, but in our own as well – and in California at that. The Owens River on the eastern side of the Sierra once sustained a vibrant community and fertile land until the entire river was diverted to sustain Los Angeles. There must be countless similarities between Chihuahua’s Rio Grande and the Owens Valley in California. These are both drastic examples leading to two river’s severe illness and death, in the case of the Owens River. At what point does a river start to become ill in the first place? Once it starts to become ill do we even have the ability to detect the illness anymore?
Two days after her bleak Mexico experience, Beatriz floated down the Rio Grande in a raft in Big Bend National Park. The river had become a river once again because of the Rio Grande’s confluence with the Rio Conchos. Marcos Paredes of the National Park Service was Beatriz’s guide. His major life decisions have been made in isolation on the river. He fears for its life, ‘What people have got to understand is how we are killing this river. And dead is dead…. There are values that we don’t traditionally look at that we should consider – solitude, quiet, dark skies. How far should we go to protect that?’ Paredes asked when the last time Beatriz went anywhere and did not see another person. Or has she ever? Beatriz replied without having to think about it: no.
I found her answer disheartening. How many people also have not? How can we protect those things Paredes asks about if people have not experienced the value of them? These are not things that can be reduced to monetary values such as the value of water converted to electricity or the value of water sold for agricultural or domestic use. These are the things of unquantifiable value that help heal societal illnesses. The same gap resurfaces…
Beatriz concludes her article: ‘By the end of the day…I am also changed in a way I never expected…. I never considered that this body of water…was a living thing that could die…. I long to return next year and float down other canyons, to savor the feeling I tasted so briefly… - that of being one with the river, of the water in my own body pulling like a magnet toward the river…. I long to see a day when we fix the problems with this river that has provided so much life.’
The light bulb has finally been turned on.
Monday, December 05, 2005
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