Watershed Stories

For most of the last sixteen years I lived twelve miles from the divide separating my terminal-basin watershed from that of the Pacific Ocean. I am a mountaineer, striving to live like John Muir did. The high peaks that he climbed at the top of Yosemite's watershed sheltering the living glaciers so intently studied by him were the same ones that I climbed at the top of mine.

I lived so close to that divide that I climbed many of those peaks from my home without the aid of fossil fuel--once I
rode my bike from Tioga Pass, at the top, to my front door in twenty minutes (with a tailwind, going up to 55 mph at times, even passing a slow truck followed by a long line of cars piloted by timid drivers). Another time I started riding my bike up Tioga Pass after 11 am and got home by dark, with enough time for having both lunch and dinner at Tioga Pass Resort and climbing North Peak. I also hiked from Mono Lake to the headwaters of Lee Vining Creek, and on a multi-day trip I hiked from the headwaters of Rush Creek to Mono Lake. During these years I learned many things about the mountains, the watersheds feeding the streams, and the lake to which everything drained.

Following in John Muir's footsteps, I also got married and moved to the Bay Area--but so far have not had the chance to become an agriculturalist (we'll see how that one goes). Last week I moved over that shared divide--but not just a few miles over. I moved due west over three full degrees of longitude, to the upper reaches of the Tomales Bay watershed, just north of San Francisco. My terminal basin is now the Pacific Ocean. I moved from the high, snowy, cold desert mountains to the sea-level rainy forests of the North Coast. I returned the U-haul four days ago and today is the first day without rain.

The first night at our new house it rained--Jack said half an inch. Then it hailed the next morning and rained more while the sun was shining. There is moss growing on my driveway. After wiping down the counter with a wet sponge, it takes a really really long time to evaporate. Our neighbors are our age--something I also haven't experienced since soon after leaving college over ten years ago, and somehow refreshing.

The house we moved to is on a stream terrace just downstream of the confluence of Larsen Creek and San Geronimo Creek. Coho Salmon run here in the fall. The air smells of Bay trees and wet forest.

That day I was out for a walk on the Thorner Ridge Trail and was scoping out my new neighborhood. Naturally, my thoughts went to the creeks and the topography and vegetation. The north-facing slopes were mostly Douglas Fir, Bay, Tan Oak, Madrone, and the creek bottoms had groves of Coast Redwood and Alder. The south-facing slopes were grassy, but with Valley Oak, Coast Live Oak, Bay, and some Doug Fir in the hollows. One ridgetop plot had been cleared with a large solar array in the center with some steep vertical furrowing near the bottom of the cleared area. The Mule's Ear was blooming, as well as the Scotch Broom, and the Poison Oak was going to seed. The ticks were out if you got off the trail, which you definitely should--they are easy enough to brush off. The green hills were just starting to turn yellow.

I thought of what Jack had recently told me about the flood of '82. The water was rising in the creek, spreading into their yard, caused by some debris jam or other blockage somewhere downstream that backed up the water. It kept rising and rising and raining and raining. Large objects floated by. Somebody climbed out into the logjam with a chainsaw to break it up. The water has never risen as high since.

I looked down on the valley and the hints of topography showing through the carpet of forest cover. The valley seems to narrow a lot just downstream, and perhaps that natural choke-point would cause water to back up in the wider part of the valley upstream.

The creeks were already at a summertime trickle, despite the rain that day. When I got home and took a shower, I thought about the septic system, wondering where in the yard it was. This time of year it would have plenty of infiltration capacity, but in the winter when the soils are saturated, what then? I'd never lived in a house with a septic system before.

I'm sharing my watershed with an aquatic endangered species. I have direct impacts on the Coho Salmon. How can I modify my activities to minimize the impacts? Have changing climate and vegetation patterns already reduced their habitat? Were the north-facing slopes more open a century ago? Does it matter, since it is clearly forest today?

As I get to know my new watershed, and hear stories of it, I'll share those stories and my thoughts here. I'll also share stories here of watersheds that I've known in the past.