Up The Road (http://new-wp.uptheroad.org/?cat=67&paged=3)
Enthroned above an oak-studded arroyo in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains, Pasadena the place is actually an idea—the idea that simple, healthful living amid gardens, orange groves, and the fellowship of good neighbors can save civilization from the mass-production mindset of the industrial era. (more…) Continue Reading →
This Fall, out at my ranch on Rock Creek, I had a beautiful crop of apples on my heritage apple trees. These old trees have been growing since the 1800s. I had dreams of applesauce and visions of apple jelly, until one morning when I found my apple trees stripped bare. Their limbs were pulled down and broken off, and there was bear scat on the ground. A few mornings later, I saw the culprit galloping across my top field, heading north to the hills. Continue Reading →
Here are 181 Candidates to Seriously Consider
On October 22, 2014 the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences identified 181 dams in California that are “high-priority” candidates for reallocating water flows, to protect the health of related watersheds and sensitive species—in keeping with the state constitution’s “beneficial use of water” section, the public trust doctrine, both state and federal endangered species acts, and Section 5937 of the California Fish and Game Code, a rarely enforced state law more than 100 years old. (more…) Continue Reading →
Road Trip! Sunny Dreams Part 1
No sooner do we stop complaining about the summer’s heat than we start grousing about the chill in the air—minding not so much the nippiness itself as anticipating the toe-numbing cold that comes later, hitched to the memory. Such ingrates, we Californians. Deciding where to go and what to do for some winter fun, that’s easy if you’re a skier or snowboarder. But what if you’re not a winter sports fan? Continue Reading →
Any place is more than just material objects, landscapes, and homescapes. Things carry names as part of the history of a region. Names give meaning to the raw data of dirt, streams, weeds, and animals in a particular place, and especially to the integration of things. Layers of namescapes cover any landscape. Common names like “blackbird” or “poison oak,” “sparrow“ or “weed” may suit a population of adults and children who participate in everyday interactions with nature more or less absentmindedly, uncritically. Continue Reading →
Following Hwy. 1 north from Mendocino County leads to Leggett and the junction with Hwy. 101. The big attraction here is the Drive-Thru-Tree Park, as schlocky as it sounds, but for some reason we humans just love driving through trees. They carved this car-sized hole in the Chandelier Tree in the 1930s, and for a fee you can “drive thru” it, or bike or walk (RVs won’t make it). Continue Reading →
Dust off the backpack, get new laces for those hiking boots. This is the place. California’s isolated “Lost Coast”—virtually uninhabited and more remote than any other stretch of coastline in the Lower 48—has been found. Here steep mountains soar like bald eagles, their domes tufted with chaparral, a few redwoods tucked behind the ears, and sink their rock-knuckled, grassy talons into surf that surges onto black-sand beaches. Local people, of course, snort over the very idea that this splendid stretch of unfriendly coast was ever lost in the first place, even if area highways were intentionally routed away from it. They knew it was here. Continue Reading →
It’s not as if there are no redwoods before you get to Humboldt and Del Norte Counties. Stranded stands of coast redwoods can be found along the Central Coast, in protected, wetter areas as far as the southernmost reaches of Big Sur. But here, along the North Coast, is where the tribe truly thrives. They once numbered an estimated two million, but even here the native population of coastal redwood trees has been reduced through logging and agricultural clearing to isolated groves of virgin trees. (more…) Continue Reading →
The war of politics and power waged on behalf of Mono Lake and its water has been so contentious, convoluted, and long-running, and has involved so many public agencies and public hearings, so many lawsuits and compromises, that the simple facts are virtually impossible to separate from the details. Central to the saga, though, is the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “If we don’t get the water,” said self-taught engineer and water czar William Mulholland in 1907, “we won’t need it.” (more…) Continue Reading →
In his new book Living with Water Scarcity, David Zetland offers a brief yet astute description of what have become universal water allocation conflicts:
“Go anywhere in the world and you’ll find two opposing sides to a water allocation. A farmer complains about water going to the environment. An environmentalist complains about water going to the city. A businessman complains about water going to farms.” All of them are certain that they deserve the water more than others, Zetland says. They agree that politicians should allocate water for its highest and best use, but doubt the ability of water managers, government officials, and political leaders to decide what “highest and best” might be. (more…) Continue Reading →