My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir

Source of book: I own this.

It is impossible to be a outdoor sort in California without feeling some connection to John Muir. More than any other person, he was responsible for the protection of our magnificent National Parks here in this state, and can be said to have founded the American conservation movement. Without his efforts, Yosemite National Park would have been looted by developers and miners - it was his guided tour of the future park with president Theodore Roosevelt which gave the necessary push to create the park. Later, he would co-found the Sierra Club, which has done more to protect the natural world and the environment than any other group over the last 100 years. Without Muir and the Sierra Club, the magnificent giant sequoias would likely have been logged to extinction. Muir came along at the right time - before the growing oligarchs had the power to buy everything up and destroy it. He correctly understood that conservation was a matter of justice: destroying the natural world literally steals from the future generations. (Something our current despoilers need to be taught all over again.) 

Muir also has a lake or two named after him - and a certain trail leading from Yosemite to the top of Mt. Whitney. Some of us might say you can still feel his presence as you walk the slopes of the Sierra Nevada in the places his feet fell all those years ago. 

Born in Scotland, Muir and his family immigrated to the US when he was eleven. As an adult, he migrated here and there before settling in California. For years, he scraped by without much of a regular job, trying to find his place. Eventually, with his pen, he made a reputation for himself, and went on to inspire countless others. We visited his home in Martinez a few years ago, and you can read about that here. 

My First Summer in the Sierra was written in 1911, a good many years after the actual events took place in the summer of 1869. Muir mostly copied his own journal entries and sketches, but fleshed out the narrative with additional information and background. Because of this, some of the entries read very much like the original - very “journaly” for lack of a better term. Others go on longer and include philosophical musings, information on plants and animals, and background information on the people he traveled with and met. 

The journey itself begins in the foothills west of Yosemite, traverses the ridge and plateau to the north of the canyon, and continues over Tioga Pass to Mono Lake and back. The route roughly follows that of state highway 120, although not exactly. While I have travelled much of the southern and central Sierra Nevada, this is one route I have not yet taken. A few of the kids and I had planned to do so the summer before last, but a large wildfire shut down the entire area, and we ended up backpacking west of Lake Tahoe instead. Despite the lack of personal knowledge of the exact places on the plateau, I have been to a number of the places mentioned, such as the top of Yosemite Falls, the Yosemite Valley, the upper Merced River, Half Dome, and Mono Lake. Muir made the trip as part of a sheep grazing expedition, which is why it took all summer. He signed on in exchange for his food and a bit extra cash, with the understanding that he would help as needed, but have the freedom to explore when he wasn’t. 

While one can certainly enjoy this book without having ever visited the Sierra, it certainly adds to the reading experience. Muir describes sights and sounds, smells and textures, which are instantly familiar to a regular hiker like myself. The plants and animals are also easy to recognize, even though the names can vary a bit. Just one example of that, Muir refers to the “yellow pine,” which is the older name for what is now recognized as two closely related species, the Ponderosa and Jeffrey Pines. (Don’t mix them up: you can boil the sap of the Ponderosa to make turpentine. Try that with a Jeffrey, and you will blow yourself up.) Likewise, the White Fir and Red Fir have different names, and Muir thought the Yellow Bellied Marmot was a kind of groundhog. It is important to remember that he did this in 1869, long before modern genetics, which helped distinguish species from each other and sort living things into the correct slots based on evolutionary history. That so few things are now anachronistic is a testament to Muir’s memory and observation. (On a related note, he memorized all of the New Testament and half of the Old Testament as a kid - and he was renowned in his old age for his still-sharp ability to memorize things.) 

As a person who loves the mountains and has a poetic bent, I really found that Muir’s writing resonated with me. He was definitely a kindred spirit. Here are just a few things that I loved. This is how the book opens.

In the great Central Valley of California there are only two seasons--spring and summer. The spring begins with the first rain-storm, which usually falls in November. In a few months, the wonderful flowery vegetation is in full bloom, and by the end of May it is dead and dry and crisp, as if every plant had been roasted in an oven.

I’ve lived in Southern California most of my life, and for the last two decades in the Central Valley. This is pretty accurate. And it is why sheep - and humans - tend to want to head for higher altitude for the summer. 

While in the foothills, Muir comments on Poison Oak, which is rather abundant in the middle altitudes. 

Like most other things not apparently useful to man, it has few friends, and the blind question, “Why was it made?” goes on and on with never a guess that first of all it might have been made for itself.

Indeed. And for that matter, Poison Oak is an attractive plant, particularly in the fall, when the leaves become a brilliant red. 

Muir writes early and often about the clouds, and the thunderstorms which visit the mountains on many summer afternoons. Here is just one of his eloquent descriptions of them. 

Cumuli rising to the eastward. How beautiful their pearly bosses! How well they harmonize with the upswelling rocks beneath them. Mountains of the sky, solid-looking, finely sculptured, their richly varied topography wonderfully defined. Never before have I seen clouds so substantial looking in form and texture. Nearly every day they rise with visible swelling motion as if new worlds were being created. And how fondly they brood and hover over the gardens and forests with their cooling shadows and showers, keeping every petal and leaf in glad health and heart. One may fancy the clouds themselves are plants, springing up in the skyfields at the call of the sun, growing in beauty until they reach their prime, scattering rain and hail like berries and seeds, the wilting and dying. 

Muir also makes a rather disturbing observation. He sees the deer and bears and other creatures visit the meadows full of flowers, and notes that they tend to leave the flowers alone, eating only what they need. “Man alone, and the animals he tames, destroy these gardens.” 

In the center of the narrative is a fascinating episode. Muir, having been in the mountains for over two months, is sitting on North Dome, overlooking the Yosemite Valley, writing and sketching, when he has a peculiar sense that a friend of his, who had promised to visit California sometime that year, was in the valley. Muir starts down the 3000 foot cliff before realizing that it will be dark before he gets there. He hikes back to camp, then wakes up early the next day and hikes down into the valley. (For what it is worth, that’s an absolute butt-kicker of a hike, even with the modern trail!) 

Sure enough, when he inquires at the old lodge, his friend is indeed in the valley. Muir hikes up to Nevada Falls and meets his friend halfway up Liberty Cap. Say what?! Muir has no real explanation for how he knew - he just...knew. And he was right. (Also, hiking down into Yosemite then just sprinting up the, um, John Muir Trail a few more thousand feet. In the same morning. Muir was a fantastic hiker, to say the least. As those who tried to keep up with him noted often. 

Alas, the visit is short, because his friend has a job and places to be. Muir muses, “I’m glad I’m not great enough to be missed in the busy world.” That’s kind of my aspiration. I’m not there yet - I still have to earn a living - but I can still head into the mountains on a regular basis. 

I also have to quote his description of Vernal and Nevada Falls. We have hiked this route about every other year for the last decade (see this post), and it is one of the prettiest hikes ever. It should be on everyone’s bucket list. Come to California in May or June and I will be happy to take you on a hike. 

The Vernal, four hundred feet high and about seventy-five or eighty feet wide, drops smoothly over a round-lipped precipice and forms a superb apron of embroidery, green and white, slightly folded and fluted, maintaining this form nearly to the bottom, where it is suddenly veiled in quick-flying billows of spray and mist, in which the afternoon sunbeams play with ravishing beauty of rainbow colors. The Nevada is white from its first appearance as it leaps out into the freedom of the air. At the head it presents a twisted appearance, by an overfolding of the current from striking on the side of its channel just before the first free outbounding leap is made. About two thirds of the way down, the hurrying throng of comet-shaped masses glance on an inclined part of the face of the precipice and are beaten into yet whiter foam, greatly expanded, and sent bounding outward, making an indescribably glorious show, especially when the afternoon sunshine is pouring into it. In this fall--one of the most wonderful in the world--the water does not seem to be under the dominion of ordinary laws, but rather as if it were a living creature, full of the strength of the mountains and their huge, wild joy. 

The passage continues, describing the Silver Apron and Emerald Pool and other iconic sights. Muir clearly loves these places he describes. He also captures a thought about fishing as “sport.” (Muir, like myself, didn’t mind the idea of hunting or fishing for food - but didn’t like the idea of killing for fun.) 

It seems strange that visitors to Yosemite should be so little influenced by its novel grandeur, as if their eyes were bandaged and their ears were stopped. Most of those I saw yesterday were looking down as if wholly unconscious of anything going on about them, while the sublime rocks were trembling with the tones of the mighty chanting congregation of waters gathered from all the mountains round about, making music that might draw angels out of heaven. Yet respectable-looking, even wise-looking people were fixing bits of worms on bent pieces of wire to catch trout. Sport they called it. Should church-goers try to pass the time fishing in baptismal fonts while dull sermons were being preached, the so-called sport might not be so bad; but to play in the Yosemite temple, seeking pleasure in the pain of fishes struggling for their lives, while God himself is preaching his sublimest water and stone sermons!

I did laugh at this one. There was a more serious moment later on, when Muir left the camp to hike to Mono Lake. He met a group of Native Americans, and felt guilty at his response. Muir may have lived in a time when the indiginous peoples were largely dismissed as “savages,” but he genuinely pushed back at this idea. Realizing that colonialism had displaced them from their homes and ways of living, he noted that their current impoverished state was the fault of their conquerors. Thus, when he felt repulsed when asked for whiskey, he noted his deep sadness that he felt repulsion from his fellow human beings. As in other places, he quoted Scotish poet Robert Burns: “It’s coming yet, for a’ that, that man to man, the warld o’er, shall brothers be for a’ that.” 

Once Muir got to Mono Lake, he mentions more about the Native Americans in the area, particularly their traditional diet. Of the foods mentioned, two are ones that I have experience with. First is pine nuts. When I lived in the mountains, we had Singleleaf Pinion Pines all over (and they are in the Sierra Nevada too), which had large and tasty nuts. A Navajo acquaintance showed me how to roast them properly. The second is the fly larvae which live in Mono Lake, and are blown to shore in huge piles. A ranger guided hike there introduced me to the larvae, and a couple of the kids and I tried them. Kind of like tiny shrimp, perhaps. 

My First Summer in the Sierra is a thoroughly enjoyable book, particularly for anyone with a love of the forest, mountains, or foothills of California. 

***

From my own perambulations:

North Dome from the base of Half Dome. (For more on that hike, see here.) 

 Half Dome (left) and Liberty Cap (right) from the John Muir Trail. 

By Nevada Falls.

Our Common Wealth by Jonathan Rowe

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

This little book has been on my list for a while. One of my kinda-sorta new years resolutions was to order a couple of books on my list and read them.

At less than 100 pages, this is a super quick read. It consists of short chapters, which are more about the philosophy than the implementation of author’s ideas. Since Rowe already distilled his ideas into a concentrated and succinct form, I risk quoting the entire work in summarizing.

The basic idea is this: alongside our “official” economy, there exists a giant parallel and complementary economy that he calls the “commons.” These are things, like the ancient version, which entire communities hold together, and which benefit everyone. These “commons” are not counted in economic reports, because they don’t register actual economic activity, even though the “official” private and public sector economies depend greatly on their existence.

The ancient idea of the commons is easier to understand. Certain places were held in common, for everyone to use, subject to unwritten understandings about how to protect them. These included, of course, the common grazing lands of England (and elsewhere in Europe), the fisheries and forests, and so on. There are modern equivalents too. Our oceans, atmosphere, sidewalks, and the internet are specifically mentioned. In Rowe’s view (and I tend to agree), the commons are under assault in our time, the prey of powerful corporations interested only in the next year - or next quarter of profit, rather than the long term. Because the Commons are less visible, they are not protected. Thus, a lot of what we call “profit” or “economic expansion” is really just the raping of the Commons.

While I don’t think this book and its ideas are the entire picture, I do think Rowe does capture a significant part of the reason why we are facing runaway inequality, a crumbling environment, and a lack of commitment to the common good. Rowe is absolutely correct, however, that this is largely a modern phenomenon, driven by a certain worship of private profit above all else. He may blame Adam Smith more than I do, where I think Ayn Rand and others are more to blame, but his underlying premise is solid.

Let me start with the quotes at the beginning of the book, which are fascinating:

First is a couple of lines from Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village,” one of the first poems to deal with the urbanization caused by the Industrial Revolution. (The whole poem is all too applicable today, with our rapacious profiteering, vulgar ultrarich, and more…)

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay

The second is a quote from Wendell Berry, who I have come to love - and need to read more of.

A proper community...is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another.

In the introduction, Bill McKibben references Garrett Hardin’s essay from the 1960s, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Rowe refers to it in the body of the book. The problem is that this essay was highly influential...while turning out to be almost entirely bullshit. The Commons existed and functioned for literally hundreds of years - far longer than our imploding klepto-capitalism has been in existence. Communities around the globe have been able to manage the Commons wisely and carefully. It is when the commons are invaded by profiteering that they break down.

With this idea, Rowe aligns himself with an older version of Conservatism, that of Edmund Burke. While Burke had his wince worthy moments (colonialism anyone?), his conservatism was a vastly different breed than today’s Right. I share Rowe’s natural affinity for classical conservative thought - that concerned with the preservation of social institutions and the Commons. I too have been appalled at the takeover of the Right by “billionaires, yahoos, and zealots.” (All of which found their Platonic “form” in the person of Donald Trump.)

Rowe pretty much nails it when he notes that the operating principles of the Commons are different from the Market.

Unlike the market, which is organized to maximize short-term private gain, the commons is (or should be) organized to preserve shared assets for future generations and to spread their benefits more or less equally among the living. If government nurtured this sector as zealously as it nurtures the market, the modern world would be a healthier and happier place.

I also liked Rowe’s attempt to define the Commons - a task as difficult as defining “the market” or “the state.”

In fact, the commons includes our entire life support system, both natural and social. The air and oceans, the web of species, wilderness and flowing water - all are parts of the commons. So are language and knowledge, sidewalks and public squares, the stories of childhood, the processes of democracy. Some parts of the commons are gifts of nature, others the products of human endeavor. Some are new, such as the Internet; others are as ancient as soil and calligraphy. What they have in common is that they all “belong” to all of us, if that is the word. No one has exclusive rights to them. We inherit them jointly and hold them in trust for those who come after us. We are “temporary possessors and life renters” as Edmund Burke wrote, and we “should not think it amongst [our] rights to commit waste on the inheritance.”

Rowe then notes that the need is not for the government to run or own the commons, but to use laws, rules, boundaries to protect it - just like it does aggressively for for private property.

Later, Rowe directly addresses Hardin’s essay. As Rowe sees it, Hardin assumed that people exist outside of social structure, and lack the basic ability to communicate with each other, let alone cooperate for the common good. It is this idea of economic “rationality” which dominates our discussion of how people behave, despite overwhelming evidence that people don’t actually act like this. (Witness as one example, the fact that whole groups of people consistently vote against their economic interests, in favor of their tribalistic interests.)

There is a whole section on a story which has a lot of personal significance to me: that of Pacific Lumber.

Those of us who live in California are usually familiar with our majestic redwoods - the tallest trees in the world. They grow in a limited band in the coastal hills of the northern part of the state. While they were once widespread, only five percent of the original old growth forests remain - fortunately these have been protected.

 Old growth Redwood forest, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, 2016. 

Picture by me.

Well into the 1980s, most of the forest that was still in private hands was owned by Pacific Lumber - a family operation dedicated to sustainable operations. When I was a kid (age 9 or so - 1986?), we visited the redwoods for my first time. As part of that trip, we took a tour of the mill in the town of Scotia. It was a real highlight, and I remember all of the documentation of sustainable practices and so on.

What I didn’t know then, was that that the year before, Pacific Lumber had been taken over - in one of those 1980s hostile takeovers - by a predatory company, Maxxim, which shortly thereafter started clearcutting. Hey, maximize those short term profits!

In early 2002, the first year of our marriage, Amanda and I took a trip to the redwoods ourselves. Because of my memories, we stopped at the mill. But it was largely vacant, and you could just see a little bit of ongoing operations. By the time we visited with the kids years later, the company had gone bankrupt, and the mill was shut down, leaving environmental devastation in its wake.

 The Scotia lumber mill back in the day - click to enlarge.

As Rowe notes, the forests are gone - perhaps forever, or at least for hundreds of years. A few people made huge profits, and the rest of us lost. It was a classic case of plundering of the Commons. Had the forests been viewed - and protected - as belonging to everyone, this predatory behavior would have been stopped. And this applies to pretty much every pressing environmental issue today: private profiteers aren’t actually creating wealth - they are plundering it from the commons.

Rowe correctly notes that this is permitted - nay, encouraged - because the benefits of the Commons are not easily tied to money. My electric bill may be lower because I have shade trees, but they don’t figure in the economy the way that PG&E does.

I’ll also briefly mention the concept of “community of goods” as being of interest to lawyers. In general, thinkers from Locke on down have recognized that the right to property is superseded by necessity. As Lock put it, the property claims of the rich man “must give way to the pressing and preferable Title of those who are in danger to perish without it.” Something to keep in mind in our own times, when the modern Right insists that it is more important that the ultrawealthy keep more of their income than that everyone else have enough to survive. As Rowe points out, this was justified historically by the idea that the needy had a prior property right which came before the right of private property.

I think my favorite chapter was on Conservatism, however. As one who is temperamentally a conservative, and yet who is morally appalled by the modern Right, with its racism, social darwinism, and reactionary politics. Let me quote a bit.

Few things would shake up American politics as much as clarifying the term conservative. From the daily media one might surmise that conservatives are people who hate taxes and gays and love markets and religion. But the conservative tradition runs deeper than that, and in some ways contrary to it.

Yes!! Rowe goes on to quote Burke as noting that society is an organic whole, and those with more have a duty to support the common good with their taxes. (Say what?!!) And how about this Burke quote?

“[Society is a partnership] not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

Kudos to Rowe for pointing out as well that Burke and Smith and the other founders of Conservative thought defended individual private property, not corporate property. (Smith, for one, loathed corporations and banking, and considered them serious threats to society.) Rowe goes on to note that even some of the most doctrinaire libertarians eventually expressed reservations about unregulated corporate klepto-capitalism. One was Wilhelm Ropke, a disciple of the rather loathsome Ludwig Von Mises, who eventually wrote a book entitled The Humane Economy, which questioned much of the market-based views he had previously held. A key quote:

“The highest interests of the community and the indispensable things of life have no exchange value and are neglected if supply and demand are allowed to dominate the field. The supporters of the market economy do it the worst service by not observing its limits and conditions.”

I have to quote the last paragraph in its entirety, because it is so good:

In recent decades, authentic conservatism - the kind that respects community, locality, tradition, and virtue - has been displaced by a phony kind that is politically expedient and cynical to the core. It channels the conservative impulse into a few red-meat issues - abortion, gays, school prayer - that pose no threat to the bankrollers of either party. Thus, one does not often hear a Fox News commentator talk about the limits of the market, as opposed to what else should be given over to it. What this phony “movement” really professes is not conservativsm, but the opposite - a belief that it is okay to waste the patrimony so long as somebody makes money doing it. Edmund Burke would be turning in his tomb.

I want to mention a few other ideas in closing. The first is the idea that time is part of the commons. One of the pernicious developments during my lifetime is the idea that work should bleed over into an increasing share of total time. Hours have increased, and more take work home via electronic devices. In essence, the Market claims ever more of our time - and it isn’t workers who benefit from this, but the corporations which demand it. This leaves less time for the uncompensated work which keeps society functioning. (Side note here: this “worked” for decades because women were expected to do all the uncompensated work. Now that this has changed due to a combination of feminism and declining wages, a lot of “women’s” work just isn’t getting done…)

Another thing I want to touch on is the fact that the Internet is the “sidewalk” of the 21st Century. Rowe mentions this, although the book was written before Facebook and other social media became such important parts of our lives. Rowe was prescient in this. Thus, when we discuss Net Neutrality, for example, what we are in a sense discussing is whether the Commons of the Internet (which was invented by government and academics using government funding) will be taken over by private profiteers. Will it remain a commons, or will it be entirely monetized. In large part, the last election was evidence of the monetization of the sidewalks of our century. Fake news pushed by foreign governments was allowed to squat and take a shit on our public spaces. It is every bit as offensive as nailing posters to the trees in our national parks.

The book is a little less solid on concrete solutions. Given its scope, this is understandable. It isn’t intended to be a policy manual, but a book of ideas. And I think it succeeds at that.

After all, the most important thing here isn’t a specific policy, but a different way of looking at things. A way that recognizes the Commons as a property right that deserves protection. A view of pollution, for example, that views it as a theft of the Commons - a taking of property from everyone else, that deserves full compensation. An idea that libraries and schools aren’t expendable luxuries - or assets to be sold to private interests -  but part of our Commons, to be preserved for the benefit of all. A return to the idea (common until Disney) that a decade or two of copyright protection was the maximum before ideas (which never occur in a vacuum) are returned to the public domain for the benefit of all.

I want to be clear about this: Rowe is not a communist by any stretch. He is not anti-capitalism. He’s not arguing for a government takeover or anything. Rather, he notes that the private sector, the public sector, and the Commons exist (and have always existed) side by side. It is in recent times that the private sector has metastasized to endanger the Commons, and it is now the Commons, more than the private sector, which needs a renewed effort of protection.

Our Common Wealth is an interesting book, and one that really resonated with me as an old school Conservative who is alarmed at the replacement of the idea of preservation for future generations with a reactionary push to re-create all the injustices and cruelties of the past. It is a good reminder that the great Conservative thinkers of the past were genuinely concerned with the common good, and willing to place limits on the market as much as on government. And that they recognized the need for preserving our Common Wealth for the benefit of all, not just for the ultra-wealthy corporatists and those most skilled at exploiting and plundering the Commons. I, along with other classical Conservatives, wish to see the Commons available again for our children and grandchildren - like they were for our grandparents.

Channel Islands National Park

This post is part of my series on the National Park System. One of my goals while the kids are still at home is to visit as many of the National Parks and Monuments in the Western United States as we can.

When I was a kid, we used to camp throughout the year. During the hot days of summer, we would head for the mountains. During the cooler part of the year, we would camp at the beach. For the most part, we liked to camp at a place called Emma Wood State Beach, just west of Ventura. The campground is right on the rocky beach, so you can sit and watch the ocean during the day, and see the lights of the oil rigs at night. If it is a clear day, you can see across the channel to the string of islands about 20 miles offshore. 

(l-r) Anacapa Island, Santa Cruz Island, Santa Rosa Island

Picture taken from Rincon Parkway, 2015.

(l-r) Platforms "Gina," "Gail," "Gilda," and "Grace." 

Picture taken from Rincon Parkway, 2015.

The infamous Platform A is further to the west by about 20 miles. 

I'm pretty sure we crossed between Gail and Gilda on our boat ride to Santa Cruz Island.

 There are eight total Channel Islands. Santa Catalina Island is inhabited - and is a premier scuba diving destination. San Nicholas and San Clemente Islands are owned by the US Navy, which uses them for live-fire exercises. Ironically, the Navy is also committed to protecting some endemic species on these islands. It appears the occasional shelling is less damaging than the goat, sheep, cattle, and pig ranching that was done in the late 1800s. San Nicholas Island is also the location for the real-life story told in Island of the Blue Dolphins.

The remaining five islands, (west to east) San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, Anacapa, and Santa Barbara, are all part of the Channel Islands National Park. Anacapa and Santa Cruz were designated a National Monument back in 1938. The others were designated as part of the newly-created National Park in 1980. However, because they were private land, they had to be purchased (at exorbitant cost) from the landowners. This process took until well into the 1990s - and the last of the feral pigs weren’t exterminated until a few years ago.

Human habitation of the larger islands dates back at least 10,000 years, but it wasn’t until the 1800s that the Mexican government granted large estates on the islands to ranchers. Over the years, goats, pigs, cattle, and especially sheep were raised on large ranches. These wreaked havoc on the local flora and fauna. 

 Scorpion Ranch, Santa Cruz Island. Now part of the national park.

What really started the push to preserve the islands, however, was a human-caused catastrophe. In 1969, what was then the largest oil spill in US history occurred. Even today, it is the third largest in US history. Over a hundred miles of coastline was fouled, thousands of birds died, plusa large numbers of fish and marine mammals. Southern California today is home to 23 million people - it was lower then, but it was still a highly populated area.  The catastrophe was enough to spur significant action. Our modern environmental laws stem from this incident. The EPA. The Clean Water Act. Actually, pretty much everything the current Administration and the GOP wish to dismantle. Here in California, the incident led to state legislation such as the California Environmental Quality Act, and the formation of the California Coastal Commission. In addition, since that time, California has refused to permit any further offshore drilling within its 3 mile limits. You can read more about the spill here. 

 I'm pretty sure this is "Gilda," taken from the boat on the way back from Santa Cruz Island, 2018.

The spill also led to efforts to preserve the unique ecosystems of the Channel Islands - a rare bit of wilderness just a few miles from one of the most populous areas of the United States.

One unique feature of the park is that more than half of it is underwater. Significant portions of the ocean surrounding the islands is a nature preserve, leading to vibrant underwater ecosystems and fantastic diving locations.

I had previously been scuba diving off of Anacapa Island, but had never actually set foot on the land. Recently, the kids and I took a boat out to the largest island, Santa Cruz Island, for a day of hiking and exploration.

Santa Cruz Island is interesting in that only a quarter of it is owned by the Federal Government. The rest was donated over time by the original owners to the Nature Conservancy. This portion of the island is kept largely wild, with visitation restricted. The Federal portion is more accessible, with hiking trails and a campground.

The Channel Islands are also an interesting demonstration of Charles Darwin’s famous theory. Darwin noted that isolated island populations of animals developed unique traits over time. In particular, island creatures tend to grow either larger than usual, or smaller than usual. This is a phenomenon which is seen all around the world, and the Channel Islands are no exception.

While hiking, we saw several examples of this phenomenon.

First is the Island Fox. Regular sized foxes are common in North America. Kit Foxes are a much smaller version. Where I live in Bakersfield, you can find San Joaquin Kit Foxes, which are the size of medium-small dogs. But on the Channel Islands, you can find even smaller foxes - more closely related to full sized foxes than true kit foxes - an endemic species which nearly went extinct as a result of human interference. Here is what happened: pigs were brought over to the islands, and became feral. The pigs destroyed fox burrows, but also attracted Golden Eagles, which ate both the piglets and fox cubs. As a result, the foxes were on the brink of extinction - only 100 or so were left. The Nature Conservancy and the NPS worked together to save them. The pigs were finally exterminated by 2006. Native Bald Eagles were reintroduced to the island. These were territorial, and kept the Golden Eagles away - and Bald Eagles eat fish, not foxes. Recently, Island Foxes were removed from the Endangered Species List - a fantastic success story. You can read more here. Island Foxes lack the usual fear of humans, so they can be a nuisance. They will steal your food if you are not careful. On the other hand, they are not aggressive and won’t bite unless handled. And, they are seriously cute. Roughly the size of cats but weighing less, they have a lot of cat-like mannerisms, making them irresistible for kids.

 Island Fox, Santa Cruz Island, 2018

Another endemic species with a small size is the Island Fence Lizard. These are smaller than their close relative, the Western Fence Lizard. There were several other bird and reptile species which are considered sub-species unique to the island, but the differences are more minor.

Finally, there is the Island Scrub Jay. There are two mainland species of Scrub Jay here in the western United States, the California Scrub Jay, and the Woodhouse’s Scrub Jay. The Island version looks similar to the California version, but is significantly - 50% - bigger. It also is a strikingly rich blue, and has a different call than other jays. DNA evidence suggests that it split from its mainland cousins about 150,000 years ago - which coincides with when the islands likely were separated from the mainland. 

 Island Scrub Jay, Santa Cruz Island, 2018

In addition to the abundant wildlife underwater, on the land, and in the air; Channel Islands National Park contains great views, memorable hikes, and beautiful clear water.

The easiest way to get to the islands is via boat. While I know people who have kayaked the 10-20 miles across the channel, the average mortal will generally want to catch a ride with Island Packers. Scuba divers can take a trip on one of several boats to a variety of destinations. I haven’t gone diving much since we had kids - just sporadically - and I am not up on which boats are the best these days, so ask around a bit.  

Scorpion Bay from the trail. 

 The north coast of Santa Cruz Island from Cavern Point.

Anacapa Island from the boat on the way to Santa Cruz Island.

Common Dolphins in the Santa Barbara Channel. 

There are an estimated 10,000 of these that live here. 

The eastern side of Santa Cruz Island. 

Anacapa Island from Santa Cruz Island.

Anacapa is actually three separate islands separated by narrow channels.

View from the Smuggler's Bay Trail. 

An abandoned oil rig near the centerline of the island.

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

This book wasn’t a Newbery medalist, but it did win an honorable mention back in 2013. I have mentioned before that we are listening (in no particularly organized manner) to various Newbery books that look interesting. I can’t remember exactly why I added this one to the list, but it probably just sounded interesting. 

This book is a historical novel, set in Wisconsin in 1871. Actually, the whole book was inspired by the author reading a history of the Passenger Pigeon, a bird that once numbered in the billions in the North America, but was exterminated by the early 1900s by a combination of hunting and habitat destruction. It was one of the first ecological disasters to come to the attention of Americans, and was one of the forces behind the movement to protect places and species. 

 Audubon's illustration of the Passenger Pigeon. Audubon's book is referenced in One Came Home.

Anyway, Amy Timberlake read about the pigeons, and the idea for a novel started taking shape. The book centers around one of the last big pigeon migrations and nestings. Pigeons are worked into the narrative from beginning to end, as is the question of the ethics of killing.

The book, though, isn’t primarily a story about birds. It is a mystery and psychological coming of age story. It opens in kind of the middle of the story with the funeral of young Agatha Burkhardt. The story is told by Georgie Burkhardt, the younger sister. She is, to put it mildly, an unreliable narrator, and delightfully lacking in self-awareness.

Georgie is convinced that the body that was found isn’t her sister, and that Agatha is alive. The book in fact opens with that idea:

“So it comes to this, I remember thinking on Wednesday, June 7, 1871. The date sticks in my mind because it was the day of my sister’s first funeral, and I knew it wasn’t her last - which is why I left.”

We don’t find out the rest of the back story until near the end of the book though. Georgie tells of the past through a series of flashbacks, but the actions of other characters are hidden for longer. What is clear early on, however, is that there is a love triangle of sorts. Well, more like a love quadrilateral if you count Georgie, who isn’t eager to have her sister marry and move away.

Billy McCabe, the eldest son of the Sheriff, has proposed to Agatha, and she turned him down. Not too long after, the banker, the richest man in town, Mr. Benjamin Olmstead, comes courting Agatha. He has money, and a fantastic library, and Agatha seems smitten.

Then Georgie sees Agatha kiss Billy, and squeals to Mr. Olmstead, who throws Agatha over. Soon afterward, Agatha runs away from home with some pigeon hunters, and a few weeks later, and badly decayed and scavenged body wearing Agatha’s dress is discovered several dozen miles out of town.

Georgie is both sure that Agatha is alive and worried that if Agatha really is dead, that she is responsible for the death. But she isn’t the only one. Georgie runs away herself, having attempted to rent a horse. Instead, Billy McCabe lends her a mule and insists on accompanying her on her quest to find the truth. And Billy has his own secrets and his own guilt.

By the end of the book, the two will have survived a cougar, had a run-in with counterfeiters, discovered useful information, found out just how good of a shot Georgie is, and spent most of the time fighting.

Georgie isn’t the most pleasant character. She is actually fairly obnoxious, honestly, with a perpetual chip on her shoulder. But she does kind of have reasons. She has unresolved guilt, and grief she can’t really face. And she is all of thirteen and has faced with a lot of adversity and responsibility before she can really handle it.

Billy is a great character. He is by no means a perfect person, but he is pretty steady for nineteen. He also has a lot of patience for Georgie, even when she is frustrating. He also has a kind of laconic way of communicating which seems both realistic and suited to his place in the story.

I’ll stop with that as far as plot goes. There are a number of twists, and that is part of the fun. It is quite a suspenseful book - and definitely on the young adult side of the violence line, at least for modern books. My kids were okay with decayed bodies with faces eaten by wild animals, and screaming cougars, and broken ribs, and thumbs shot off. But your kids might vary.

This book started off kind of dark and weird in some ways. (When MY kids mention that it is dark, you know it really is.) But after the start, the mystery took hold, and the humor started showing through. By the end, we were really engrossed in the story, and really cared about the characters. I thought it was a strong book in a year in which we have listened to a lot of good ones. Anyone who says that children’s fiction is all junk this century, unlike the supposed glory days of the 1950s and 1960s probably needs to visit a library and ask for Newbery books. Sure, there is fluff, as there always has been. But the best of today’s fiction has strong, memorable characters, imaginative settings (who saw pigeons as the basis for a story?), and psychologically astute writing. 

I should also mention Tara Sands, whose voice in the audiobook edition is fantastic. She went beyond the printed words to bring the characters to life. Billy in particular was marvelous, sounding like the character should, and totally different from the others. I also appreciated the Wisconsin dialect and accent. This particular book is one of the best audiobooks I have heard this year, and Sands is the reason why.

If your kids can take the unpleasant stuff, give this a try. Otherwise, teens would likely find this one interesting.

I strongly recommend reading the author’s note at the end, which tells of the pigeon inspiration, gives some of the history, and explains what is fiction and what is fact in the book. She certainly did outstanding research, and writes about pigeons with a genuine affection.

Banking Water

The official Bakersfield motto is “Life as it should be.” The unofficial Bakersfield motto is “A riverbed runs through it.”

Anyone who has lived in California is painfully aware of how crucial water is in our state, and how contentious the battle for water can be. One significant reason for this is that most of our water originates in the northern third of the state, while most of the use takes place south of that. We have an extensive system of canals and aqueducts which make possible the existence of Los Angeles and the urban south, as well as the central valley agriculture. Bakersfield is at the south end of the Central Valley (really, two valleys: the San Joaquin in the south, and the Sacramento in the north.) This valley is one of the most fertile places on earth, making California the most productive ag state in the US.

There is a long and convoluted history of water in California. If you want to read an interesting summary, here is a good place to start. Beyond this, though, you get into the political weeds really quickly, and there is a LOT of misinformation out there. The debate is generally spun (particularly on the Right) as being environment versus agriculture. But this ignores a lot of the actual facts of the situation, which makes discussion frustrating. (For example, agricultural use has gone down a little bit due to efficiency - but it remains well within historical patterns. And most “environmental” use is by rivers in the northwest of the state that have never been connected to the water grid…) The specifics are beyond the scope of this post, but it does help to understand the background a bit, and why there is so much overheated rhetoric and deliberate distortion of the facts.

During 2014 and 2015, California suffered through two years of historically deep drought. As in, the tree ring evidence revealed that we hadn’t had that bad of a run in at least 500 years, maybe more. I posted this picture in my review of The Big Thirst - it shows a normal year of snowpack versus 2014. Since the majority of the water for our area comes from the mountains, this was a huge deal.

During the drought, groundwater (which hasn’t been sufficiently regulated) was used to make up the difference, and we really hit our supplies hard. 2016 was an average year here, but 2017 has been an above average year - we have quite a bit of snowpack, and the reservoirs that nearly disappeared are full again. But we cannot be wasteful.

So, anyway, most years, we do not have water in the Kern River where it flows through Bakersfield. All the outflow from Lake Isabella is diverted for irrigation. This year, for the first time in a while, we actually have water in the river - not just during the winter, but we will have it through the summer. This has been nice, as we have gotten to take the kayaks out on Sunday afternoons.

But that water isn’t being wasted. Far from it.

The southern San Joaquin Valley, back in the day (as in 200 years ago), would turn into a shallow lake during wet years. Wetlands, really. This “Lake Tulare” was huge, and the water table was high as a result. This water didn’t make it to the sea, but merely soaked in. Once agriculture was established, the lake was drained for farmland, and the water used for irrigation. The Kern, Tule, and Kaweah rivers no longer flow to their ends, but dry up as water is diverted.

But this year, there is water, so the rivers flow. In the case of the Kern River, the water goes to the southwest of Bakersfield, and is used by the Kern Water Bank. This entity uses 30 square miles of settling ponds to store water in the aquifer underlying Kern County. During good years like this one, water is replaced to raise the table, and is then available for pumping in dry years. It’s a remarkable system, and a real gem of a facility.

I have a friend who works for the Water Bank, and he showed us around the place, hunting wildlife with our cameras. The wetlands that are created by the water draw thousands of migratory birds, and the place is a birder paradise. There is a whole colony of White-faced Ibis that is nesting there right now, five species of heron, and a whole lot more.

According to my friend, this year, they are storing about 920 cubic feet of water per second. That is 1800 acre-feet of water being put in the ground every single day. Since an acre-foot will serve an average family for an entire year, imagine how much water that is.

One of the reasons that water is being run down the river right now is a political consideration. If Isabella needs to release water during the summer to make room for more snowmelt, then Los Angeles gets that water. If they run it now, and store it locally, Kern County gets the water. So we store as much as we can now, and let LA purchase more expensive water from the aqueduct.

Anyway, there is your bit of history and local politics for the day. Which is all just a setup for some pictures I got at the water bank. Enjoy.

 

 Probably my best shot of the day. A White-faced Ibis taking flight. 

 Black-necked Stilt.

 This Gopher Snake let us get really close. Just beautiful, and over four feet long.

 Lots of Red-winged Blackbirds. Also a few Tri-colored Blackbirds, but I didn't get as good of a closeup of those. 

 Two of the five species of herons we saw. Great Egret (L) and Snowy Egret (R).

 Juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron.

 Cinnamon Teal.

 The focus is just a bit off on this one, but these are Cattle Egrets, and I like the way the framing turned out. 

 Adult Black-crowned Night Heron.

Black-necked Stilt on its nest.

***

For those who care: This was the first outdoor shoot with my new camera - a Nikon P530. These were mostly shot from my vehicle - the car serves as camouflage so that the birds aren't spooked.