Baby Blue Eyes, Popcorn, and Fiddleneck at the San Joaquin River Gorge

BEFORE THE DAM

Words and Music By Jim Robbins

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We trudged on the cliff down the trail into the canyon,
the jewels in the grass gleaming all around us.
We brushed lips as dippers rose and fell,
diving and submerging. A shadow flowed
through brilliant leaves and merged
on bare arms. We sprawled, half-dressed,
in a shallow house pit, near a pounding stone
with deep mortars--like eyeless sockets
gazing up at the sky before a shadow
submerged the canyon. The last
eagles glided over and spiraled high,
roots pulling tribes up from the soil,
high into branches, to flow in an ocean
of breath, as night flooded the gorge.

BEFORE THE DAM

   The Dumna and Kechayi Native Americans once occupied the San Joaquin River Gorge and surrounding lands. The Pa'san Ridge Trail loops around the west side of the river--the word pa'san is derived from their language and means “pine nuts,” a food source that exists in abundance on the hillsides.  In spring the ridge trail provides an opportunity to experience a breathtaking array of flowering trees and plants: redbuds, lupine, poppies, fiesta flowers, goldfields, owl’s clover, fiddleneck and popcorn. At one point the ridge trail forks south, dipping down to the edge of the inundation zone of Millerton Lake, where rotting flotation devices, driftwood and trash are strewn upon or near Native American pounding stones. In spring, baby blue eyes blanket the grass between the river and the trail near indentations, the size of house pits, in the ground. The small piece of level land at the bottom of the gorge is the only place where the Native Americans could have set up their huts and buried their dead. Across the river, rocks left over from the construction of a small hydro project rise on the slope like a barricade.
   Sometimes under water, sometimes exposed, the ancient Native American site remains in a water-logged limbo where pristine public land transitions into wasteland. 

San Joaquin River Gorge

   The conflicts related to water in California have often been described as a war—other than a dam, only a war could have created a no-man’s land of similar proportions. The denuded slopes of the gorge reveal the high water mark of Millerton Lake, the reservoir created by Friant Dam. Only a crop of cockle-burrs flourishes there. Reservoir water has destroyed the root systems of the native plants and trees, leaving unstable rocks and soil. Unlike a war zone, however, this no man’s land will not renew itself as long as Friant Dam stands.
   The Hydraulic Brotherhood has proposed another dam above Friant Dam in an area known as Temperance Flat. The main problem with the proposal for another new dam: It would not develop more water. The State Water Resources Control Board has determined that no more water rights are available on the San Joaquin River. Moreover, according to a recent study, the water from the river has been over-allocated by a whopping 861%. Very little new water would be created because other dams already capture and divert almost all of the river’s flows. The trickle of new water that would be created by the dam would be diverted to landowners and corporations with the water rights. So, in another twisted form of socialism for the wealthy, the public would pay billions of dollars to destroy a magnificent public park for landowners and corporations who own the water rights.
   After I found out about the dam proposal, I soon discovered that I had no job security at all as an adjunct instructor at a community college. I wrote an op-ed piece in opposition to the dam, and a few days later I experienced an unscheduled evaluation at the small, rural community college where I was teaching. This was highly unusual—in fact, it had never happened to me before. The administrator who evaluated me begrudgingly marked "excellent" in every category but refused to hold a post-evaluation meeting with me. I was not rehired the next semester—after twelve years of working every semester, with a rating of excellent in every category on every evaluation. (I had worked at that campus longer than any other employee....)
   After I lost the job, my wife lost interest in the issue and stopped going to the gorge with me. Losing a job because of a position on an environmental issue to her was not a heroic sacrifice but an unforgivable mistake. The family always had to come first. She was right, of course. 

   I continued to oppose the dam, however. The foolish members of the precariat class who strive to protect what is of value to the community must risk losing a job or being blackballed or threatened whenever speaking truth to power in the San Joaquin Valley, where a cabal of wealthy farmers and corporations and lobbyists and politicians have already killed almost 100% of the rivers and wetlands.

   My one consolation: The proposal for a dam at Temperance Flat was eventually rejected. But I can almost guarantee, if past is prologue, that the Hydraulic Brother will be back at some point with another proposal for a dam on public land, at Temperance Flat or elsewhere.

 All Text, Music, and Illustrations Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins

SECRET PATHS

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

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Now we know all the secret paths
along the river. Today the ravens
are gone, so are the butterflies
that jewelled the sand.

Graffiti defaces the rock,
and trash, too much for us
to clean up, covers the little beach
where we once were alone.

We have forgiven each other
so much that forgiveness hardly matters
anymore, the bats softly
flitting around us, skimming

the water as the skyline begins
to glow, the pure, intense moon
rising behind a bare oak.
Now we know all the secret paths

along the river, the bats softly
flitting around us, skimming
the water as the skyline
begins to glow, the pure,

intense moon rising, its
terrible craters so clear
in the cold
still air.

SECRET PATHS

   Years ago, my wife and I would travel almost every weekend to the North Fork of the Kaweah River. We especially loved a spot that no one else knew about, or so we thought. We were so confident that we were alone that one day we decided to go skinny dipping. We swam, shocked into motion by snowmelt, to the other side, and then back again. Just as we were sloshing out of the water, we heard laughter from the trail above. I sprinted up the hill on sharp oak leaves and hid behind a bush. She dashed off in a different direction. After a while, I noticed her down below, pacing back and forth next to the river, fully clothed. Even seeing her in the distance, I was still unsure about stepping out of the shade. Finally, I inched toward the beach and quickly dressed while the intruders were battling upriver against the current. My wife was mad at me for making her wait so long.
   That evening we watched the moon rise above the mountain as bats skimmed the surface of the water. The battered moon silhouetted a bare oak at the top of the hill. Later I realized that it is a perfect symbol: Everything gets battered by experience—sometimes through suffering we learn to empathize with others and learn to forgive. And I believed that my wife and I understood each other so well that we hardly ever needed to forgive each other anymore. My wife at one point loved to sing this song. Perhaps the theme resonated with her to some degree, but I realize now that maybe I shouldn't be so certain about anyone's ability to forgive.

 

Pestle in a Pounding Stone

WILD
Words and Music by Jim Robbins

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I began at dawn and reached
the dead incense cedar, its red bark
spiraling upward to a jagged,
barren point, surrounded by the high,

thin whistles of chickadees and the rapping
of woodpeckers. I must have begun
in a wet field of blue dick and mustard,
the redwing swaying on a fluorescent raceme

above the purple flower heads and fresh
green grass, or was it a high meadow
blooming with shooting stars and lupine,
where marmots scurried across the path,

the pond hundreds of feet below so clear
I could see fish drifting in sunlight.
I must have seen the crowns
of gigantic trees without knowing

what they are, above the canopy,
and eventually encountered the first
huge trunks of the grove, dwarfing me
completely. I must keep finding

a path that leads me to a leaf
or root or wing or petal connected
to everything else, making me
lose myself over and over.

WILD

   Often when exploring the woods, you can feel lost even if you know exactly where you are, mainly, I think, because you lose yourself in the frequencies of nature. You are no longer stuck in the beta brain wave, the only brain frequency, it seems, that is acceptable in modern society. The “heart beat" of Mother Earth, at 7.83 HZ, is on the border between Theta and Alpha brain waves. In other words, Mother Nature herself can induce a brain wave frequency in which one experiences tranquility, intuition, visions of spiritual symbols, and wise inner voices. I have found this to be the case over and over in my excursions into nature.
   My conscious mind often fears this shift, especially when it is about to occur. Other times, it happens without me even noticing. When the shift occurs, often I feel a profound sense of peace and a connection with everything in the world around me. I do not want to romanticize nature; living in the wild is not easy, especially if you have not been taught how to survive. But I think modern humans have a distinct advantage over our ancestors: We can cross the border between one order of existence and another whenever we please. In some places, like Fresno, CA, you can cross the border into nature in less than an hour, and continue, if you choose, to head deeper and deeper into the wild.
   Over the past thirty years, my wife and I have taken advantage of the opportunity to experience many different ecosystems. For many years, we celebrated the natural world by pointing out and admiring and praising its living beings, from its smallest flowers to its largest trees. We didn’t mind being dwarfed by a mountain peak or a gigantic tree; we reveled in the sublime.
   My wife enjoyed singing “Wild” even though it is not easy to sing. My wife shared with me most of the experiences I describe in the song. One of our most sublime experiences occurred when we were hiking in a high forest and suddenly encountered a grove of giant sequoia trees that we had not expected to find. Each sequoia, as I say in the song, dwarfed us completely. When another creature makes you feel miniscule in comparison, you cannot help but appreciate “the other.” Once you've made a connection with any other creature, even the smallest creatures seem mysterious and magical.
   I have many vivid memories of the smaller creatures: a marmot running across the path, or a redwing blackbird perched on a mustard plant, or a kingsnake in the grass, or a turtle on a river bank. Sometimes my wife and I encountered a stunning array of wildflowers, and sometimes one bird was enough to knock our socks off. The different ecosystems were never the same from one day to the next, and we were never disappointed.
   Somewhere along the line, my wife and I stopped crossing the border into otherness, to the detriment of our marriage. She got so bogged down by work, and I became to fatigued by a chronic illness that we no longer went out into nature. Eventually we stopped appreciating each other.

 Mr. Mellifluous with Pounding Stones

THE ROCKS

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

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After the rain, newts plodded
over moss and leaves, recoiling
as we stepped near them. They blended
so well with the wet leaves

that we had to watch each step.
We would stop at an outcrop of rock,
sliding our fingers over soft, wet moss,
and we would swear that the rocks--

harboring other creatures, sprouting
star moss--are as significant
and mysterious as ourselves.
In the sycamores, a phoebe chirped,

the steward of the confluence of the creeks.
People who once ground acorns
by the creeks have vanished,
their descendants building casinos

on nearby reservations. Sometimes
we would honor friends, who, fighting
for wildness, had been threatened, blackballed
or ruined. I once believed we would fight

for wildness the rest of our lives together,
but now you're gone, and I slowly
build a fortress with mossy rocks,
for a moment no longer a trespasser,

my chants protecting the solitude
of the heron, the granaries of the woodpecker,
the ranges of the newt and bobcat and all
the tribes of trees and flowers,

my magic gathered from wetness,
mossy rocks, fallen leaves.

The Tower

THE ROCKS

   I lost my job as the director of an environmental organization when the Fresno office was shuttered due to personnel problems and lack of funds. In retrospect, I don't think that it was a coincidence that as soon as the group became effective, it suffered a deluge of problems: a woman submitted a dubious sexual harassment lawsuit against one of the field managers; another field manager formed a bogus organization with a similar name but no board of directors; break-ins occurred regularly; my group was evicted from our office because of overdue late charges, and the list goes on and on. Administrators in the main office back east provided no support at all. I ended up seeing the worst in people—lying, backstabbing, betrayal, all of which undermined the great work we had been doing in the community to protect air and water quality.
   After my experience in the political arena, I have concluded that we live in a faux democracy where elected officials pretend to represent the public during interminable meetings full of legal and bureaucratic jargon, working instead behind closed doors for the contributors who backed them. At all levels of government, corporations and the super-wealthy have captured politicians through campaign contributions, and the powerful turn off the money spigot anytime politicians don't do what they want. Corporations and the wealthy exalt profit above people and ecosystems and even the planet. Other creatures and even humanity at this point have very little chance of surviving this system. Our economic and political system is no longer sustainable.

   When I was the Field Director for this environmental organization, I feared that global warming would probably impact the environment in such a way that some insect species would catastrophically disrupt the environment and human society. Thirty years later, after an increase of only one and a half degrees Celsius world-wide, the bark beetle has infested and killed millions of trees. There is not enough water due to continuous drought for trees to create enough resin to drown the beetle as they burrow into the bark. The inferno that eventually results kills everything in the ecosystem, even the healthy trees and plants, leaving only a desert of dirt and ash.

   Thirty years ago, my superiors focused on building coalitions, both with like-minded groups and individuals as well as with traditional adversaries. In other words, our group first worked to decrease air pollution, which kills a significant percentage of crops in the San Joaquin Valley every year. We hoped to form coalitions with farmers and establish their trust in order to eventually restore dead rivers and wetlands in the Valley through water conservation and rational changes in water policy. Then, we hoped to work with a larger coalition of diverse interests to address larger issues such as global warming.

   Baby steps. But the capitalist system does not respect rational efforts to establish and maintain a sustainable society. The capitalists who control the politicians long ago stopped caring about the public good or the health of the planet and focused on their bottom line. They continue to commodify and exhaust people and resources. The capitalists who are the source of some of the worst crises, such as global warming, are also the ones who gouge us at the pump and the grocery store. (Cattle are the number one agricultural source of greenhouse gases, for instance.) They make insane profits as they destroy our future.

    Locally, stop one bad project and zoning changes are made for others. Not even a well-funded organization can keep up, especially if that organization is paralyzed by personnel problems. Even if a grassroots organization manages to whip up enough public opposition to stop egregious projects, other bad projects soon appear in the pipeline. I might sound paranoid, but a successful effort to undermine an effective citizens' group is good for the capitalists' bottom line: Without fresh air and sunshine, business as usual remains highly profitable for the top few percent. The San Joaquin Valley has often been compared to a toilet bowl. I have little hope for the foothills and mountains or the world as long as our political and economic systems remain the same. If concerned citizens cannot work effectively on a local scale, how can we work effectively on a global scale?