Nature Noir (29 page)

Most studies agree that under current climate change scenarios, droughts and heat waves will lead to greater demand for hydroelectric and other power to run air conditioning and higher water use for landscaping and crops. At this writing California has not had a serious drought for a decade and the two worst dry spells in the twentieth century were only six years long. Yet studies of ancient tree stumps found on lake bottoms show that California experienced a two-century drought at the end of the first millennium and another one nearly as long around
A.D.
1200. And for the present and foreseeable future—unless something changes—the forty-two-thousand-acre dam site called Auburn State Recreation Area will continue to be owned by a government agency whose purpose has always been to develop water storage. The writer John McPhee visited the Auburn Dam site in the course of his research for his book about geology,
Assembling California.
While there, he learned about the timber dam that had existed on the site as early as 1854. McPhee would remark dryly, "[At Auburn,] environmentalists have discovered to their eternal chagrin, a dam site is a dam site forever, no matter what the state or nation may decide to do about it in any given era."

Nevertheless, the American River canyons are resurgent and bursting with life. In 2001 the city of Auburn—a freeway burg just over half an hour by car from the capital city of the most populous state in the union—had a new problem. Bears coming out of the American River canyons at night had been rampaging through the streets, knocking over garbage cans and startling residents awake. By 2003 Auburn was being fortified with a firebreak along the canyon rim to defend the town from brushfires that periodically sweep the canyon's fire-adapted chaparral. Deer, foxes, and bobcats had been leaving footprints in the dust of the firebreak as they joined the bears in the streets of town. Biologists conducting a reconnaissance of the North Fork had found legions of foothill yellow-legged frogs,
Rana boylii,
whose decline elsewhere in the Sierra had been worrying herpetologists for some time. And Lake Clementine Road, which runs from just above the Auburn Dam's waterline to four hundred feet beneath it, appeared in a guidebook of the best spots to see wildflowers in the Sierra Nevada.

A couple of months before his death, Frank Olrich had come to the ranger station with an idea about forming a group of volunteer docents he called the Canyon Keepers, who would offer the sort of nature walks that the beleaguered rangers didn't have time to do. Today, Canyon Keepers is an official state park volunteer association, and as many as sixty people have been showing up for some of its guided hikes. Meanwhile, up Foresthill Road, a federal grant has brought dignified paved parking lots to the formerly dusty trail-heads. Local pride in the American River is growing. The
Auburn Journal
now runs scenic photographs of the river on its front page as often as two or three times a week. Some of the park's signs don't even have bullet holes in them anymore. And the crusty all-male ranger staff has been leavened by the arrival of female rangers and a woman superintendent.

In 2000, Bruce Kranz, State Parks' superintendent for the American River, ran for a seat on the Placer County Board of Supervisors against a moderate, controlled-growth, environmentalist incumbent. Kranz's campaign literature claimed that as an employee of State Parks, he'd devoted himself since the age of seventeen to the stewardship of California's environment; however, builders and developers were prominent among his campaign contributors. On Election Day, when it was too late for the press to report it to the voters, his campaign received $50,000 from a political action committee tied to Congressman Doolittle and development interests. Apparently the voters didn't entirely buy Kranz's credentials as a green; he outspent his opponent by a wide margin and was defeated by a much narrower one.

Increasingly isolated among the preservationists at State Parks, Kranz retired from Parks to devote himself to politics, taking a part-time job as an aide to conservative state senator Tim Leslie. In this capacity, in 2002, Kranz appeared at an outdoor press conference overlooking the foundations of the Auburn Dam to deliver a speech in support of a new effort by Leslie, Doolittle, and fellow conservative legislators to finish the dam and flood the landscape he had stewarded. The following year he ran again for county supervisor. This time he successfully ousted the incumbent with a generous advertising budget. Kranz's campaign raised $241,000 from a list of contributors that reads like a directory of the building and land development industries in the Sierra and Sacramento regions. His controlled-growth opponent raised less than half that amount.

By this time Steve MacGaff had retired. O'Leary retired, went fishing in British Columbia, and settled close to the coast. Doug Bell retired, went hunting and fishing, and now designs hiking trails. His daughter is studying ballet at a good university. Sherm Jeffries is a superintendent for State Parks on the east side of the Sierra.

Only Dave Finch and Will Reich still don their uniforms each morning in the old firefighters' mess in the North Fork. Finch retired once but couldn't stay away. Reich still patrols the North and Middle Forks in an oar boat. There is still no word of the miner who was run out of his claim at Otter Creek by a bear.

After the beating of Ricky Marks by Mary Murphy's boyfriend, Marks and his partner, Jerry Prentice, abandoned their cabin on the North Fork. The rangers burned it down in the winter of 1987. Marks and Prentice continued mining for a couple of years but never struck it rich. Eventually both men left the Sierra for cities on the coast, where Marks was later arrested for drunk driving. Out on bail, he failed to appear in court. A warrant has been issued for his arrest. Mary Murphy left her abusive boyfriend and moved to New Mexico, where she completed a twelve-step program and now lives happily and peacefully without alcohol or alcoholics.

New road maps published by the California Automobile Association no longer show a Y-shaped lake in the canyons of the American River.

Each year on July 11, Early Ditsavong's mother and father return to the place where the North Fork runs into Lake Clementine with offerings of incense, flowers, ceremonial food, and a candle to light Early's way through the spirit world. In 2002 the California National Guard bestowed its highest posthumous honor, the Medal of Valor, on Private First Class Early Ditsavong for the bravery he displayed in the rescue that cost him his life. He had been scheduled to go to army basic training the week he drowned. I never again saw anything like that lady beetle migration I encountered the day I took Early's parents to the North Fork. Nor has there been another earthquake of the size of 1975's on the Foothill Fault Zone, although we are undoubtedly due for one. There has not been another mountain lion attack in Auburn State Recreation Area in the decade since the death of Barbara Schoener. And Karen Dellasandro's body still has not been found.

In April of 1990, John Carta made another parachute jump off the Foresthill Bridge—this one without a motorcycle. When he landed, he hid his parachute in a camouflaged bag under the span, intending to retrieve it after the rangers and sheriff's deputies went home. It was discovered by the rangers and seized as evidence. That summer, using another rig in a jump from a building, he broke his back. Still wearing plaster casts, that September he accepted an invitation for an airplane ride over Clear Lake, across the Central Valley from Auburn. The inexperienced pilot put the two-engine aircraft through a series of showy, low-altitude maneuvers, then lost control and crashed into the lake. Carta, the pilot, and six others aboard were killed instantly.

In September of 2003 festivities were held to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the Foresthill Bridge's dedication; Placer County officials were still debating what to do about suicides there. I understand that recently a marriage was conducted at the bridge, after which the bride and groom parachuted into the North Fork canyon.

By the time this book is in print, it will have been four decades since the legislation authorizing the Auburn Dam was passed, and the forty-eight miles of canyons the dam would have inundated are still with us. Given half a chance, these canyons will continue to bloom and recover from the insults of the Gold Rush, yet they will henceforth lack the feeling of permanence they must have had for the first people who knew them. What has happened to them has rendered these canyons mortal in our eyes, and like the rest of wild nature, they will now continue to exist only at our sufferance. It is my hope that there will be rangers watching over them for a long time to come, or at least until armed men and women are no longer necessary to protect such places.

I
OWE SO MUCH TO MY EDITOR
, Deanne Urmy, who helped me to shape this strange little book from the very beginning. The steadfast support of my agent, Sandra Dijkstra, and her staff too have been a source of great comfort. Manuscript editor Beth Burleigh Fuller brought new energy and a fresh point of view to our work, late in the editing process.

Gary Snyder nudged me toward telling this story when, at a party one night in the early 1990s, he asked me how my work as a ranger was going. I told him that working under the waterline of the Auburn Dam bothered me terribly. "That seems like a good subject for an essay," replied Snyder, and in my suggestible state as an aspiring writer in the presence of a master, I set out to write one. Casey Walker edited that first essay for the
Wild Duck Review,
and Emerson Blake edited the next one for
Orion.
I am thankful for their insightful suggestions. My special thanks to Nina Leopold Bradley, daughter of Aldo Leopold, who wrote me when the first essay came out in print, encouraging me to continue.

My thanks to the geologist Richard Hilton and the botanist Joe Medieros for their friendship, encouragement, and assistance, and for the love they've instilled in the students of Sierra College for the mountains for which their school is named. California's state climatologist Bill Mork and hydrologist Maury Roos of the Department of Water Resources gave me invaluable help in their fields. Naturalist and writer David Lukas showed me new wonders on our hikes together in the American River canyons, which I thought I knew well before. So many others enriched various fields of knowledge I needed to understand what I was writing about better: Michael Barbour on Mediterranean vegetation; Jeff Mount on river geomorphology; Mike Lynch on the history of the American River; Lucia Hui, Stan Wright, and Mark Miller on ticks and Lyme disease; Kevin Hansen on mountain lions; and Mike Catino and Tom Aiken on the history of the Auburn Dam. Sharon DiLorenzo helped me find another key witness to that history. Jill Dampier and Nick Willick assisted me in my search for old records. Mark Hewitt, Robin Heid, and Matt Davies taught me about the esoteric sport of parachuting from bridges. I benefited greatly from an unpublished multivolume compendium of the history of the American River by John Plimpton. The work of Norris Hundley, Donald Kelley, Robert Pisani, and Gray Brechin also proved indispensable.

For their encouragement, mentoring, generosity, and friendship, I will always be grateful to Scott Russell Sanders, Wendell Berry, John Hart, Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez, Robert Michael Pyle, Rebecca Solnit, George Sessions, Patianne Rogers, Alison Deming, Louis and Brett Jones, Oakley and Barbara Hall, and Michael Carlisle. I am also deeply thankful to Marion and Olivia Gilliam, Aina Barton, Laurie Lane-Zucker, Jennifer Sahn, and the staff and board of trustees of the Orion Society for their early and longtime support of my work.

To my wife, Susan, and my children, James and Emma, I extend my deep gratitude for their love and wholehearted support.

My father, John Fisher-Smith, learned that my mother was pregnant with me on a backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon. Later he and my mother led my brothers and me into the wilderness, patiently fanning sparks of love for the mountains and canyons into flame. That fire has never gone out, and for that I am deeply thankful. Stephen Studebaker, by turns a schoolteacher in the Navajo Nation, a railroad conductor, and a seasonal park ranger, inspired me to take up rangering. During a climbing trip together in the High Sierra thirty years ago, he wore a park service uniform and got paid, and I didn't, and didn't. To my youthful eyes it looked like a good racket. It turned out to be more like work than I had imagined. Mike Whitfield and John Kraushaar taught me much about my job in the early years. Inspector Brian Dressler and Sensei Rod Sanford of Zen Bai Butoko-kai and the Pacific Institute of Defensive Tactics taught me much of what I know about being a law enforcement officer. To Mike Van Hook, my apologies and my thanks for putting up with me.

Perhaps most of all, my thanks to every ranger I ever worked with, the many more I didn't, and those who follow me. You continue to stand in defense of the sweetest and most hopeful places I know: the world's national, provincial, and state parks and wildernesses.

* Colfax is much improved since 1986 as a result of an upswing in Placer County's economy. The Station House (not its real name) has changed hands and is today as pleasant, decent, and safe an establishment as you might find anywhere. On a recent afternoon there, sipping straight whiskey in the dim light from the front windows, I asked a grizzled fellow customer what he remembered about the place circa 1986. He paused, then answered, "The fights, at least two of them, every Saturday night," and turned back to the beer he was nursing. The Colfax police station is now a sheriff's substation, and as this book went to print the Union Pacific Railway was offering passenger service from a newly renovated station and the long-windowless wooden hotel across the tracks was being renovated for occupancy after decades of decline.

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