On a beautiful summer morning, two young women with a
local environmental group had set up a table at the entrance
to Lower Park. They were educating and gaining community
support for a salmon ladder their group is building in the
canyon beyond town, a large semi-wilderness area called
Upper Park.
After 30 years in this city, I learned a
few new things. During native times, and before the area was
overtaken by 鈥渃ivilization,鈥 five species of salmon made
their way upstream to spawn during the rainy winter months.
They were so numerous during spawning season that it鈥檚
said you could practically walk on top of them from one side
to the other.
In recent decades, there are no more
than 100 salmon of a single species that make a successful
journey to spawn each winter. The local environmental group
is working to remove man-made impediments and increase their
I also learned the name native people gave of
the creek that has played such a big part in my time here, a
stream that becomes a small, raging river during the wettest
months of winter. It was called Otakimsewi.
California had some 300 distinct tribes or sub-tribes, a few
of which held out until the 20th century. I happen live in
the area where what used to be called 鈥渢he last wild
Indian in America,鈥 Ishi, walked into the nearby town of
Oroville in 1911, after the last of his tribe had been
murdered or died of disease.
When I first moved to
California as a young man, I took a hiking trip into a
remote area north of here in the Sierra Nevada Mountains,
with the destination of Kingsley Cave, where settlers had
slaughtered at least 30 Yahi people.
The cave, which
is more like an overhang of rock, is named after Norm
Kingsley, a participant who expressed the need to switch to
a smaller caliber pistol for killing the babies because of
the destructive force of his larger rifle.
reflect for a moment on that mentality. Is it any different
than many in the IDF in Gaza, where 15,000 children have
been slaughtered?)
I recall someone in the group
finding an arrowhead and shell casing. Needless to say, the
physically and emotionally grueling hiking trip left a
strong impression on me as a young
Talking about the salmon and
indigenous times with the young women brought back an
experience of what seemed then, and still seems today like a
timeless moment of salubrious time
It was dusk after a heavy rain
during winter. The rains had made the stream into a slender
river of white-capped waves. I sat on plastic and pads,
layered against the chill and wet, and looked across to a
flat area dotted with leafless oaks, barely discernible
through the failing light and a light fog.
sense of mystery at dusk, tinged with primal fear in a
man-made place made wild again by a series of storms, was
intense. I remained still and passively aware, and the mind
fell completely silent.
From deep curiosity, a
question arose, without expecting any answer: How did native
people live through the rain and the wet and the wind of
winter here?
Suddenly a huge salmon, slicing upstream
against the powerful current, shot by, its upper half
exposed without leaping out of the roiling water. At that
moment, there was a rip in time, and I found myself staring
into the camp of people that lived on this land before the
Europeans came.
To this day, 20 years later, I feel it
was not an illusion or imagination, but a gift. Contrary to
all my conditioned, white man ideas of how Native Americans
lived, what I saw was a place of considerable physical
comfort and great social warmth.
The people were well
fed, and their shelters, fires and animal hides protected
them from the inclement weather. There was little detail,
just an overall scene of prosperity and tranquility that
produced a deep ache in the meditative state.
the ache of a rapacious, hollow culture contrasted with an
imperfectly harmonious culture. Without fear or loneliness,
I recall feeling incredibly alone.
In the meditative
state, in which time had ended, did my question, immediately
followed by one of only 100 spawning salmon that year,
actually create a rip in time?
I feel so. And if so,
the paradox is that we can momentarily step back in time,
but only if we completely end time in the present.
almost always look at the present from the past, but it鈥檚
become imperative to look at the past from the present.
Indeed, only when we鈥檙e mentally completely still and
therefore fully present in the present, can we see the
personal and collective past clearly and
accurately.
As far as the future, it鈥檚 partially
written. To see what part is inevitable, and what space
remains open is difficult, but essential, because the piece
that isn鈥檛 written is ours to write.
Global collapse
is occurring in our time, but humanity is not doomed. The
individual is a microcosm of the whole of humanity, and the
whole of humanity is a macrocosm of the
individual.
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