The Flow of the River and the Turn of the Wheel

I am lucky enough to live in a second growth redwood forest, about 10 miles inland from the northwest Pacific coast. The "Village of Mendocino" (as I understand it, it is a registered "village") is a short 25 minute drive from me, albeit that's really only a 10 mile drive, and almost half of it is on a dirt road.

The village itself is located on a beautiful peninsula which forms the north side of the Big River Bay. Big River was named for the size of it's trees. Mendocino was formed on the industry that those trees created. Around 1852, a ship called the Frolic wrecked on the rocks near what is now Mendocino. At the time, there was I believe one rancher living in the area, along with a number of Pomo indigenous folk. The ship was bound for San Francisco, bearing goods from China. Silks, teas, maybe some opium. A version of the story that I've heard is that the owner of the ship sent a representative to the area from San Francisco to claim the lost goods. When this representative arrived, he met a bunch of well dressed, very stoned native folk. Who didn't give the silks back.

But, this guy was sharp, and figured not to make a wasted trip. He took a canoe trip up Big River with the rancher and realized that there was enough lumber in the gigantic Coast Redwood (sequoia sempervirens) that he saw to build San Francisco. And probably build it again, you know, if there was, at some point, an earthquake, and the entire city burned down. Well, that last part might be an exaggeration. But sometimes, history gets kind of unbelievably exaggerated.

Did you know the folks who first saw the giant Coast Redwoods of San Francisco marveled at the sight of the immense trees and believed wholeheartedly that there was no way we would ever be able use that much wood. Now, we've got about 3% of the old growth that was here in 1852 left in Northern California. But then again, no one really knew what a chainsaw was back then. Yet alone a helicopter, or a logging truck for that matter. What takes one guy and 45 minute used to take many and at least 2 days. The chopping down of one immense tree.

Well, through it all, Big River's watershed was mostly cut. For the last half of the 19th century, slowly. Then 1906, and the inevitable earthquake and fire did burn down San Francisco, and around that time, the Industrial Revolution got married to human consumption and a population boom began and, well, now I live in a second growth redwood forest. The stumps here are amazing. There is one old growth tree left that we can hike to, and certainly there are rumors of at least a few more that do not have trails to them. Some of them are supposedly along the Big River. One of these days, one of these hot days, I am hoping to take my dog and an old pair of tennis shoes and walk the river, upstream for a bit, looking for good swimming holes and hidden grandmother trees.

Big Tree is the name of the remaining old growth tree that we have. All of the monumental ones that have trails to them also have names. I was recently in Redwood National Park, in the Prairie Creek area (a campground with lots of elk nearby), and I saw another Big Tree.

Actually a bit Bigger than ours.

Also a Corkscrew tree. And trees that seemed to be marked with the names of famous foresters - one was for Gifford Pinchot - who were a part of a famous school of Forestry, the name of which is currently slipping my mind. Our Big Tree, here at the Woodlands, is apparently altered by the weather of 1200 years or so on this planet. Some time ago the top of this tree was knocked off by giants (or possibly lightning or wind.) So, although redwoods can reach 370 feet in height (they got that "tallest living organism" clout),

Big Tree now sits at a tiny 120 feet. Never mind the gigantic fire scar cave in her base, or the 16 foot diameter base. Shit. Redwoods are virile, if anything. When a part of them gets roughed up by some wind, fire, flood, they usually go with the what does not kill me makes me stronger bit. Even if they get killed, actually. Big Tree is just one of example of the resilience of redwoods. When she lost her top, she just sprouted a new one. This type of tree is affectionately known as a spike-top. Say about 6-8 feet in diameter at 120 feet in height, then, suddenly, a new sprout, maybe a 40-60 foot tall, 2 foot in diameter trunk sprouting from the top of the old tree. Apparently, a tree such as Big Tree, so massive in size, yet missing half of it's original growth, when felled, comes crashing down hard and is very likely to splinter, causing tens of thousands of board feet of very valuable lumber to explode into shards of worthless redwood. So, we have an old growth tree in our second growth forest. I never saw it, but I've been told that there used to be a sign next to Big Tree that said something to the effect of "This tree left for your enjoyment by Georgia-Pacific Lumber Company"

I recently took a bike ride down the haul road along Big River. This is an amazing trail - I can, if I am feeling motivated, ride my mountain bike 12 miles from my house, following generally the course of the river, all the way to town. It doesn't take much more than an hour, and it's all flat and even somewhat downhill. I decided to ride down a bit, to an area where a trail cuts over and across the river. There are supposed to be some good mountain biking areas across the river, an old orchard as part of it, with a loop that crosses the river and heads back towards camp upstream. I haven't yet had the guts to try it by myself - tales of the good fruit that still hangs from the trees in this abandoned orchard (now on State Park land) are accompanied by tales of the bears that enjoy eating said fruit. Probably the same bears that occasionally raid our dumpsters. Abbey, I am sure, would scare away any and all bears that decided to threaten me. But this day I decided not to cross the river to go exploring, but instead to go into town for a burger at a new restaurant that opened at my favorite (and the only) place to see live music in this area.

The trip down to the crossing is kind of fun. Even though it's flat, and friendly, and really bikeable by just about anyone, there are some spots where you can coast down short hills and feel a bit tricky gaining some speed through former mud puddles and quick speed dips in the trail. It is serious single track for a good bit, and a large part of the ride is swerving to avoid various thimbleberries, salmonberries, and the occasional stinging nettle or poison oak. After that it opens up into wide road, with an old gravel base and enough space to drive a small truck through. Down past the crossing the Haul Rd. Just gets wider and more heavily used.

I feel lucky to live at the point on Big River that I do. The river, as it passes our camp, is just big enough to form some really good swimming holes. About 4 that I know of, at this point, with at least of 2 of those being well known in the area and well travelled. I once spent some time on the phone with a columnist from the Guardian, giving him the low down on a couple of the better known holes for his yearly Northern California swimming holes article. He seemed to know more than I did, even, about some of the holes.

The same holes that we swim in provide great shelter to migrating salmon during their winter trip upstream, and to the juvenile salmon on their trip downstream to the saltwater of their adult time. A few years ago, a large, approximately 6 foot diameter redwood fell across the river just downstream of the parking area for the swimming holes here. After a heavy flow of water through the river during the next winter, the tree was pushed to one side and now hangs parallel to the flow of the river, next to a large pool that was formed partially by the presence of the tree and the disturbance it caused in the bank when it fell. From my house I can easily walk down the hill and onto this redwood. If I am feeling it I can jump 5 feet or so down into a pool that is about 7 feet deep, and swim a short distance across to a small beach on the other side.

Even better is a spot that is further off in the woods along one of the rivers in my area. Pretty easily accessible by bike or hike, but the type of swimming hole that makes you work for it just a bit. At the hole I am referring to, my first year, I got there with a few friends of mine who had been many times previous. When they crossed to the beach they all gasped. Typically there is a rock ledge at this swimming hole which you can jump off of, about 6 feet into a hole that is a bit deeper than that. My first experience of this hole had a large redwood pinned on top of this rock, in such a way that you could climb up easily onto it's trunk from the shallow part of the river, and walk up to the base of the tree that was sitting on top of the rock. From where you stood it was at least a good 12 feet down into the same pool. It was a great jump for the summer. Sitting on the beach across from the tree, it was hard to imagine the gentle river of summer flowing in such a way that would place that large tree on top of that rock ledge. But the next winter it was gone. And the next winter the same river flooded much of it's watershed during heavy rains.

Once I had the chance to take a kayak and canoe trip down the river with a number of friends. We left from camp during the last moderately high flows of the spring. It took us all day and a lot of beer, but we made it to the beach just south of Mendocino. Along the way I was surprised at how long the river seemed to wind past gravel beaches and overhanging forests, rippling through turns with short, deep holes and long spread out shallow sections that scraped the bottoms of our boats. Then, all of a sudden, the ripples had ended, and the water pooled up like a lake with a current, flowing as one massive pool towards the ocean. I eventually stuck my hand in and tasted the water - salt. Big River is 8 miles of coastal estuary, the longest undeveloped estuary on the west coast, I believe. 4 miles more of freshwater salmon run and you reach the Woodlands. Past the Woodlands is miles and miles more of undeveloped, moderately logged Jackson Demonstration Forest, a whole story for another time that I still have much to learn about myself.

Two days after my bike trip I took the opportunity to join the naturalists here in a boat trip up Big River from the mouth as far as we could go in a few hours, then back. I got to paddle a sit on top kayak - a 13' Prowler, made by Ocean Kayak. It was a good craft, but it was impossible for me to keep up with 8 people in an outrigger. They were nice enough to wait for me. While the bike trail carved a tunnel through the thick shrubby undergrowth of the freshwater river and its floodplain, the boat trip took us through a few miles of the lower estuary - a wide open canyon with walls of redwood forest on either side and long spread out grasslands and marshes spread out on either side. The folks I was with spotted a red white and blue beach ball sitting on one of the marshes which I recovered and we enjoyed for a bit. We saw a harbor seal hauled out on a partially sunken redwood log. The seal just sat there and checked us out as we paddled by. Two other seals swam in the river nearby. Amazingly enough, the birds that we passed did not seem bothered by our proximity. We got pretty close to a few turkey vultures and a number of cormorants which were perched on branches that emerged from the river, drying themselves. We also saw a number of baby ducks and their folks, and I got to see an osprey defending its nest from a raven on my way back downstream.

It was amazing to think about the transition that the river makes between the big, open, brackish estuary we were paddling through, and the tight, winding, rippling river that I had recently ridden along. I hope to connect the two via boat, bike, or both, soon. I guess it is time for me to learn to paddle (and roll) and skirted sea kayak, in order to go further faster. I also hope to spend more of my time off this summer exploring some of the Mendocino coast by kayak.

Trees. Water. More trees. What more could you wish for. Well, after a few years of living deep in it, perhaps some sunshine. Maybe deserts. But that's a story for another time. For now, I awake each morning to look out my windows at a second growth tree that has decided to grow like a corkscrew. For some reason. I stare at this tree most mornings, and on some moonlit nights, and wonder what the hell it is doing growing like that. I try to take a minute to breath in the view that I get to have. That tree, tall, twisted, linear, beautiful...to me it is a reminder that I am lucky, that I live somewhere unique, beyond the wall, a bit up the river, down the dirt road. And that I have a trees seem to sometimes have a twisted point of view too.

Words from the woods.