03.27.07
Posted in Sierra Nevada, Background, San Joaquin Valley at 7:50 am by Dan Jensen
Sometimes creatures migrate onto the land, and sometimes the land creates its own. When the land creates its own, it does not do so arbitrarily. Every creature is an expression of its creator. Even the immigrants express the character of the land, it is sure, for the mere fact that they have found their place in the community is a reflection of the community, but no creatures express the character of the land quite like the natives.
Some lands, it turns out, are more creative than others. The secret to their creativity, so Charles Darwin discovered, is isolation.
The Pacific Coast is home to a familiar species of trout that is split into two subspecies; one, the steelhead, that lives at sea and spawns in the Pacific tributaries, and another, the rainbow, that lives an entirely landlocked, freshwater existence.
Pacific streams present varying degrees of isolation from the ocean. The Kern River is an extraordinary case, as its waters naturally reach the ocean only in Spring, when flows are high enough to escape the lakes of the Tulare Basin. When the Kern was a free river, it would flow into Kern Lake upon spilling into the Tulare Basin. If the river was high enough, Kern Lake would spill over into Buena Vista Lake. When Buena Vista Lake filled, it would overflow into Goose Lake, and the overflow would continue from there to Tulare Lake. When Tulare Lake overflowed, its excess waters would flood toward the San Joaquin.
At high flows, fish had an opportunity to migrate up and down the basin waterways, but the waterways would dry quickly, and the lakes would recede and even dry as summer and autumn progressed. The basin streams that flowed directly from the Sierra Nevada, the Kings, Kaweah, Tule, etc., were not as isolated as the Kern, because their path to the sea was only impeded by the ample waters of Tulare Lake and their own intermittent character. A fish that ascended up the Kern from Tulare Lake, on the other hand, would have a much longer journey through a chain three smaller, intermittent sinks.
Once fish got above Kern Lake, the river might be perennial, but the Sierra would present its own obstacles. The falls and cascades dropping off the Kern Plateau were the final barrier. Beyond that barrier live the California golden trout.
The domains of the three varieties of golden trout consist of four streams, from west to east: the Little Kern, the Big Kern, Golden Trout Creek, and the South Fork Kern. The Little Kern subspecies is the most endangered, and perhaps the most visually striking. The Big Kern subspecies is relatively indistinct from other rainbow trout, and is thus a rainbow trout by name. The remaining subspecies, the California Golden Trout, inhabits the two adjacent streams, Golden Trout Creek and the South Fork Kern, is perhaps the purest example of golden trout.
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Posted in Sierra Nevada, Background at 7:44 am by Dan Jensen
The southern Sierra, from the headwaters of the Kern River in Sequoia National Park southward to the sweep of the Kern River into the far southern extreme of the Tulare Basin, is morphologically dominated by a single seismic fault that splits the range into western and eastern legs, and gives the range a southerly slope with a solar inclination that helps to give it a rather sunny, flammable aspect. This southerly descent is considerable. Though the two divides of the Southern Sierra feature peaks as high as Mount Whitney (14,495 feet) to the east and Mount Kaweah (13,802 feet) to the west, one need not travel far south before no more 10,000-foot peaks remain.
In this sun-bathed high country, the trout seem to disappear and reappear in the golden light that flows through the rivers and creeks, as the flux of the streams sways left and right like a tree in the breeze. The gold trout sometimes seem custom-made for these sunward streams.
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03.26.07
Posted in Sierra Nevada, Background at 10:32 pm by Dan Jensen
The boundary between Southern and Northern California ignores the compass points, wrapping around the San Joaquin Valley from Tejon to Tehachapi and northward along the Sierra Crest to Tioga and around the northern limit of the Mono Basin. This is made necessary by the Sierra Nevada. The Los Angeles Aqueduct is perhaps the strongest argument for this suggestion, but there is further evidence. If you live in San Francisco, you probably don’t ski at Mammoth, because you’d usually have to drive 220 miles over the Sierra Nevada to Gardnerville, Nevada and drive 120 miles down US-395—over three mountain ranges—to get there. If you live in downtown Los Angeles, it’s 310 easy miles to Mammoth, and Mono Basin is 20 miles farther.
Besides being the highest and perhaps the most monolithic mountain range in the contiguous 48 states, the Sierra Nevada is essential to California in terms of physiography, history, economy, culture, and conscience. But this preeminent position is not merely a matter of gold, pioneers, mammoth cliffs, sky-high waterfalls, giant trees, and alpenglow. The physiography, history, economy, culture, and conscience are as much a matter of water as anything else.
Though the first image of California may be that of a sunny beach, it’s hard to imagine California without the Sierra Nevada and the valleys at her feet. About three quarters of the readily available surface water originating in California flows off Sierra Nevada slopes, and nearly all of the remainder flows along the foot of the Sierra Nevada in the Sacramento River. Though sunshine is what has drawn the millions to California, it is water that has allowed them to remain, and to grow a multitude of sun-loving crops, many of which have become synonymous with the state.
The fact that the Sierra Nevada provides so much water to California is not merely due to the fact that it’s the biggest mountain range around. The range looks as though it were designed to be a great dam to capture the moisture of the great westerly stream pouring off the Pacific Ocean. The dam extends four hundred miles from North to South, capturing over 20 million acre-feet a year. Like the reservoirs and diversions of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Sierra Nevada greedily hoards the waters of life for California, leaving the lands downstream barren and uninhabited.
As with any dam, the effectiveness of the Sierra Nevada is a direct product of its location, its shape, its orientation, and its height. Beyond its utility, its grandeur is not any more a product of its height than of its shape and its mass. Nowhere is this more pronounced than along its most massive segment, the great crest between the Tulare Basin and Owens Valley. Beginning in the flat expanse of cotton fields where once a great lake lived, one can travel across what is perhaps the most productive land on earth, and ascend to over 14,000 feet to the crest of the Sierra, following the streams that feed the crops, and passing great redwood forests, cliffs, and lakes along the way. There are few gentle slopes along this great ascent, but on the other side, the 10,000 foot descent is breathtaking. Though the air has been wrung dry on the east side, the Sierra provides enough water to support a thriving economy at its eastern foot.
Beyond Owens Lake, the lifeless monument to the thirst of California, lay the truly barren monument to the greed of the Sierra: Death Valley, which is, in terms of extremes, the second hottest spot on the planet. Death Valley lay directly east of Owens Lake, over Towne Pass.
A less direct route to Death Valley can be found by following the ice age spillway of Owens Lake, down the Rose Valley to China Lake and Searles Lake, from there through Pilot Knob Valley and over Wingate Pass into Death Valley. This low road between Death Valley and the foot of the Sierra would have provided the “Death Valley 49ers” a direct route from the old Spanish Trail to the Central Valley and the gold of the Sierra, had they been able to follow it. Indeed, had they used this route across Death Valley, it is likely they wouldn’t have named it Death Valley as they did. Given the time that they passed through, they might have named it Christmas Valley, or maybe Sun Valley, if they thought enough of it to name it at all.
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Posted in Sierra Nevada, Background at 10:22 pm by Dan Jensen
Maps generally depict the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles as hundreds of miles apart, and their residents would have you believe it were thousands, but the facts on the ground establish that the two cities are adjacent. They are nearly standing in the same space.
There is a secret passage that will get you right from one of these sister cities to the other. It is well known, but because of the obvious implications of such proximity, it is rarely acknowledged. It begins at the faucet. One need only squeeze into the tap and swim upstream. Follow the water, and you will find just how far these two cities are apart. Go to San Francisco, and have a drink of water. Follow the drink to its source, and you will find yourself looking down into Los Angeles.
As you follow the water from North to South, you will find yourself swimming from West to East. You will eventually surface at what was once Hetch Hetchy Valley, but you need not stop there. Swim on up to Tuolumne Meadows. You’ll still be in San Francisco. That’s San Francisco water you’re wading in. Continue upstream until you get to the Los Angeles City Limits, also known as Tioga Pass.
The Hetch Hetchy project was billed in part as a fire prevention measure, made in response to the great fire of 1906. In reality, Hetch Hetchy was just another Owens Valley. It wasn’t so much about fire as it was an over-abundance of sunshine. The residents of the Golden State had found their sunshine; it was just a matter of time before someone asked for a drink.
Sunshine is the fire that nurtures the young shoots in Winter, turns the fields to gold in the Spring, and ignites them in the Summer and Fall. The heart of the wildfire is the solar fire. Sooner or later, that fire would lead California to water. That is just the Logos of California.
The presence of the City of Los Angeles just east of San Francisco is no violation of nature. It is, rather, a natural fact. Los Angeles grabbed Owens Valley because Owens Valley provided a cheap and easy source of water. Los Angeles took Owens Valley from the white ranchers of Owens Valley for the same reason the ranchers took her from the Paiutes. That’s just the way Mother Nature operates.
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Posted in Igneous Range at 10:05 pm by Dan Jensen
I leaned against the steel wall of the bus, my chin propped up against the the cool window frame; my cheek and ear against the glass.
Beyond the glass, what met the eyes was more fleeting; less real. The desert passed. Trailer parks passed. Markets passed. A more familiar wall of trees appeared, and the bus squealed to a stop. My pants slid over the hot vinyl, and my feet fell to the metal floor. I watched my feet and the floor, on down the steps to the edge of the asphalt. The doors folded shut, the engine roared, and the cloud of exhaust warmed my lungs.
I swerved around the potholes in the driveway, following the edge of the shade cast by the trees, and ascended each speed bump as it were a hill. I heard a girl giggling somewhere above me.
It was a familiar voice, and as I turned toward the canopy, I recognized her face. The orange-haired girl.
“Don’t you go to school?”, I scolded and frowned.
She laughed and lobbed an orange down at me. I caught the orange reflexively, and nervously pulled my book bag around to conceal it. I started nervously back to the Mission.
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Posted in Igneous Range at 9:52 pm by Dan Jensen
Paul and I hurdled over the tumbleweed and sage, passing the sedentary Joshua trees, which seemed like so many oblivious adults. Jackrabbits, cracked earth, ruins, and garbage. The tumblejunk bounced over the sage like so many rabbits, sometimes stopping to mingle, or dashing off at a moment’s notice to join a tumbleweed stampede. The ruins of abandoned dwellings sometimes joined in the migration, but often tarried in the past with its ghosts.
Everything was haunted. Nothing ever died; it was simply repossessed. Paul was missing.
I began to backtrack and wheel around In turns. Finally, I noticed him in the distance, standing before something that resembled a crucifix in the obscure distance. Then I looked again and recognized it: the mainmast of the old Mission. I walked up past Paul, and held my hand against it. Then I looked down at the hexagonal hardpan under my feet, and scraped the sandy skin off with my shoes. I looked over my shoulder at Paul.
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03.13.07
Posted in Igneous Range at 10:21 pm by Dan Jensen
The sky was dirty and blue, littered with high clouds and a single contrail. I wandered throgh the formless maze of sage, my eyes turned down to the cracked clay. A warm, dry breeze wheezed through me. At length, I turned my eyes up to level, and scanned the horizon. In the distance, a dark hedgerow arose under the horizon. Upon noticing it, I began to wander toward it, occasionally lifting my line of sight to adjust my heading. Briefly, the distant silhouette of what seemed to be a girl appeared in my blindspot. With a blink, she was gone. I looked aound me for any other such silhouettes, turned back toward the hedgerow and continued onward.
As I approached the hedge, it transformed into a windbreak. I noticed that it was composed of trees, and I could just make out the light reflecting off structures under the trees. I sensed something and looked to my right. It was the junior mission hand, Paul. Our paths had merged, and we walked together toward the windbreak.
As Paul and I met the windbreak, we turned right on the first drive we encountered. We followed the drive until we met the scent of the Padre’s tobacco, which led us to the steps of a small, salmon-colored mobile home. We ascended the steps, and pulled the sliding glass door open.
There sat the Padre in an easy chair, puffing on his pipe, and listening to Vin Scully call the play-by-play on the radio. He grumbled. The Giants were a different team entirely. Last time we’d shipped out of California, they had Mays and McCovey was the MVP. When we landed in 1972, McCovey was banged up, barely hitting .200, and Mays was playing back in New York. Their batting leader was now Chris Speier, the shortstop, whose .269 batting average was just short of a career high, helping to earn him the one MVP point that he collected over his career (about 300 points are typically needed to win the annual award).
“I never taught him anything. He taught me. Willie is the greatest player I ever saw. No doubt in my mind.” — Leo Durocher
The Padre would tell us stories about the superhuman Mays, hearkening back over two decades. The “Say Hey kid” was a man who could do just about everything on the field, and do it as well as anybody. He defined the American game as far as the Padre was concerned, and now he was gone, and the Giants were a chambles. Maybe baseball was too.
The Padre switched off the radio. “Henry. Paul. Dinner is waiting. Come. Let’s go.” He switched off the radio, stood up, and turned to the door. He took my arm, and I led him down to the drive. As I guided him past obstacles, he led us to where dinner was waiting.
We turned into the lot of another small mobile home. We stepped up to the door, and walked in. An elderly woman sat in an easy chair, watching TV. The Padre turned and felt his way along the narrow passage. Paul and I followed.
A room waited at the back of the passage. There lay an old man in the bed, and the pilot standing by his side. The pilot told the old man the Padre had arrived, and the Padre addressed the old man. “Padre”, he called the old man. The old man gazed blindly at the ceiling. He didn’t look at any of us, or speak to any of us, but Padre and the Pilot continued to speak with him as though he had. Paul and I turned back up the passage and watched the TV from the kitchen space.
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Posted in Igneous Range at 8:18 pm by Dan Jensen
When the wind blew, the rain fell, and the sea surged, then the Mission Bab-El sailed. But wind and sea inevitably calm, until the sea became a great sheet of glass under the sky. At such times, the pilot would man the helm, and steer us to a landing.
As the calm sea passed under the Mission’s bow, the missionaries would gaze out over the calm, as distant mountains arose from the depths. Slowly, the sea flood would give way to terrestrial features. Ragged, saturated trees and rooftops would first break the surface. The flood would continue to subside, and people would appear, eye-deep in the flood, and proceeding with their daily routines as though it were air. We would eventually see the bottom itself, and from thence the slurry of the sea bottom would rapidly congeal, anchoring the boat in place until the sea would rise again. And it would rise, and the Seer would be the first to know. The pilot would take the helm, and the mates would hurry all trunks and all gear aboard.
I distinctly remember one clear, windless day. The Mission cut the glass cleanly. Gazing out over the glass, solitary, furry posts began to break the surface of the water. Soon each post would be accompanied by a shorter post, and perhaps another. They resembled men, standing out in the water. I determined that they must be some alien breed of tree.
Before long, as the water approached the ankles of the aliens, the tips of a myriad bushes broke the surface, and soon after that, I could see the shiny seafloor, and the hull then began to creak and groan as the seafloor solidified. Steam rose off the seafloor as it hardened, and then as it dried, the topsoil contracted and broke into plates.
I leapt off board, and began exploring the parched seabed. No two aliens was alike, though they all had the same bearded and scaly appearance. Strange creatures resembling the skeletons of shrubs rolled and hopped amid the tall aliens. I wandered across the seabed for what seemed but a moment, and turned around and around. It all looked the same to my unfamiliar eye. There was no sign of the Mission.
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Posted in Igneous Range at 7:56 pm by Dan Jensen
The lamplight splashed in bursts against the folded dome, white, scarred, and protruded like the brow of Melville’s whale. High atop the crest of the hardened dune hung a thin horizon of limp grass. The exfoliating dome of the Padre’s brow was plowed into rows by deep folds. Stone eyebrows protruded and hovered over his empty eye sockets like mantles over twin hearths, whose fires glowed red through the closed screens of his sagging eyelids.
When the brow relaxed, the depth of the folds diminished, but one fold seemed to split in the center of the dome, exposing something moist and white. It might have seemed to be his exposed cranium, but as the folds parted around it, it began to take the rounded hump of an eye—a moist, ivory eye.
He kept it closed much of the time, and always in mixed company, sometimes under a hat. It wasn’t of any use anyway, not at least in the the same way a typical eye would be. It was utterly solid: it had no cavity for trapping light, but it wasn’t blind; it just saw a different kind of phenomena. It was a kind of hybrid between a navigational orb and an oracle. I never was quite sure what it did, but I had no doubt as to its effectiveness.
I was raised in the Mission Bab-El from birth, so the seer was familiar to me, though it never ceased to be foreign. I saw it regularly, whether in the light or in my dreams.
We sat in the flickering light of the cabin for evening porridge. My spoon clattered slightly as I lifted it off my saucer.
“ere long, …”, began the Padre. I could have looked up to see my image reflected by the damp membrane of the orb, if I had the nerve. “… will come that which will cause the limbs of men to quake.”
His head cocked slightly, and he paused. The white eye opened, and the padre’s brow wrinkled around it. “We reach California tomorrow.”
Just then, the cabin swayed, and I grabbed my bowl and spoon. I resumed shovelling porridge into my mouth.
We had been at sea for week since leaving the Carolinas.
After scraping my bowl clean, I took my bowl and spoon into the galley, then scrambled up the steps to the deck.
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03.05.07
Posted in Religion, Personal, Humor at 4:58 pm by Dan Jensen
The SF Bay Area is a good place for those who enjoy trading their wages for palatable art and entertainment, but those who really desire the cutting edge—we head to Fresno.
Barry Smith (photo by Mark Fox)
Now I understand that the book Science Made Stupid defines half-life as “Saturday night in Fresno”, and yes, there was something in there about Fresno and the event horizon of a black hole, but hey, times have changed!
I had run into Barry Smith on the aether a couple years ago, and just last Thursday I was cleaning out one of my email boxes when I stumbled on the remnants of our brief correspondence. I wandered onto the web and browsed through his tour schedule: coming to Fresno—tomorrow!
Coincidence? You be the judge.
I had six hours to drive to Fresno and back and catch Barry Smith’s show Jesus in Montana in between. I’d be locked out if I got there a minute late, so I left San Jose hoping that the 2 1/2 hour drive would not be extended to 3 hours by some unforeseen calamity (as it often is).
I turns out I arrived with time to spare, so I ran down Olive Avenue, wolfed down half a California burger, ran back to the Starline and dropped the price of admission out of my wallet onto the table. I had finally made it. I stumbled into the dark club, felt around for a chair, and basked in the glow of anticipation.
It was certainly therapeutic to sit in the dark laughing in unison with total strangers about a Baha’i doomsday cult, but what was perhaps just as exhilarating was re-living the grand chase for prophecy and universal annihilation that Barry Smith so hilariously describes in his expertly timed PowerPoint presentation.
This is not just any PowerPoint doomsayer. Move over Al Gore.
Barry Smith sees prophecy in the most mundane source material. He even finds Jesus in a street address from his childhood. Ludicrous, eh? Maybe so, but it’s not as uncommon as you may think, and you might want to try it some time. It can bring on quite a buzz.
I have been there. As a young Baha’i, I studied Biblical prophecy, American Indian prophecy, Hindu prophecy, Zoroastrian prophecy, Tibetan prophecy, Nostradamus, blah blah, but I never quite grasped the “Paul is dead” scandal; not, at least, until now.
Perhaps Barry Smith is having fun at the expense of others, but as much as anything, he is poking fun at himself. Perhaps that is the most therapeutic aspect of the whole show.
This must be made available on DVD someday. Come on Barry: if Al could do it, so can you.
A few notes for Baha’is …
I should warn you that “Jesus in Montana” has been rated “R” by—er, Barry?—for foul language, and references to drugs, Armageddon, fornication, religion, and one particular sex offender; but it isn’t all that hard on the Baha’i Faith.
Barry Smith goes so far as to say that, as part of the Baha’i doctrine of progressive revelation, prophecy is the way that God tells us how to recognize the Manifestations. I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard it put that way before, but that seems to be the way a lot of Baha’is look at it. One might call it the “Thief in the Night” wing of the Baha’i Faith.
I understand that Baha’is of the dominant Haifan group are strongly advised to avoid any discussion of the sect that Barry Smith has so much fun with, but it seems to me there is little to fear. Smith pokes fun particularly at the minute size of the BUPC, and estimates, quite charitably, the total number of Baha’is at seven million. He does poke a little fun at progressive revelation, but in a good-natured way. Moses, for instance, taught us not to eat paste, and Jesus taught us how to write in cursive.
Disclosure
Yes, it is true that, like the cult leader that Barry Smith celebrates, I too am a Jensen, and yes my father is a Baha’i Chiropractor, and it’s true that he has been expecting Armageddon since he first read the Scriptures and the pilgrim notes; but that is where the similarities end. Well, my mother was born in Montana. Oh, and there was that guy named Barry who lived in our basement. Hmmm … maybe I didn’t actually grow up in California …
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