Blogs

A friend of mine cranked up a really cool blog. It inspired me to restart this blog. He wrote about searching and it got me to thinking about Hesse (even though he quoted Orwell) and I ended up writing a response to one of his blogs nearly as long as the one he wrote in the first place. He was writing about the search and I thought of the find. Ever since I was a small boy the world has seemed quite amazing...right down to the little stones the ants make their piles out of in the deserts of southern Colorado. For whatever reason, everything was a game, or turned into one over time. I became a fairly good athlete and I credit it to the way I played as a child. I would throw a ball on the roof and the resulting catch or drop would determine Super Bowls, World Series, and whatever else I could imagine. Everything took on that kind of importance. Life or death, win or lose, commit or not. Nothing has changed...I still find myself in situations that require absolute commitment. Beyond the commitment of sobriety lies a whole world covered in sand, rock, dirt, snow, ice, and water. It is this realm that inspires my being. This is where I find value, substance and growth. It is here that I have to face fear of the rational and irrational...life on life's term's if you will. The need to climb, ski, paddle and just plain explore is completely irrational. Just as irrational as man's need to destroy his world for pieces of paper, bits of metal, and the fleeting feeling of owning something beyond himself.

The journey I have been on has placed me smack dab in the middle of our folly. There is one river system without dams in the entire state of California...the Smith drainage. What this means is that salmon and steelhead have been evicted from all waters above every reservoir in the state. With few exceptions the rivers and creeks that run through all towns and cities in this fine state used to support major runs of large fish. What does this mean? We are slowly coming to grips with the ramifications of our actions. In short, the external wound (depletion of salmon/steelhead stocks and myriad other collateral drama) is hitting the internal wound (man's love of control and manipulation). It makes me wonder how many of the men who were constructing the Oroville Dam (one of the largest earthfill dams in the world) and the rest of the Stairway of Power were caught in a real moral dichotomy. On one hand, they had squealing brats at home that needed food, shelter and clothes...momma need a new pair a shoes too! On the other hand, I know some had their own experiences with the Feather River and had to have known what they were doing was contributing to a travesty...I'll bet they drank a lot.

The money had to have known, but money doesn't care.

Obviously, much had been done to kill off the big fish long before the dams came. We used to place miles of nets across entire bays to ensure most of the fish didn't make it to where they were headed. This was an unlikely oops as there were people living here long before we came that absolutely depended on the big fish coming inland as a source of food and a source of culture.

Despite all of this, I have an optimistic outlook. The system is self-righting. It is possibly perfect in its imperfection. What I do to you...I do to me. The compound interest on nearsightedness and greed cannot go unpaid forever. The debtor will collect eventually.

Every Penny.