Pacific Edge

  Finally they topped the right wall of the great trench, and the trail ran over the saddle of Bishop Pass. At the high point of the broad pass they walked by the King’s Canyon park boundary sign, and into the Dusy Basin.

  To their left the broad ridge curved up to the multiple peak of Agassiz, a wild broken wall of variegated granite. Here Mesozoic volcanic sediments had metamorphosed under the pressure of rising granitic masses called plutons, and all of that had folded together, light and dark rock mixing like the batter in a marble cake. They trod over shattered fields of dark Lamarck granodiorite, and then over bands of the lighter alaskite, which zigzagged up and striped the great wall of Agassiz, and provided the thunderbolts in Thunderbolt Peak. And as they hiked Tallhawk’s voice babbled like the sound of a distant low brook, enumerating every stone, every alpine flower tucked in the granite cracks.

  Not too long after they started down the other side of the pass, they came to the highest lake in Dusy Basin, which was unnamed. Its shores were fiercely rocky, but there was one tiny grassy spot suitable for a campsite, and they threw down their packs there. Sally and Doris began to put up the tents; Oscar flopped flat on his back, looking like a beached whale; Kevin got out the gas stove and cooking utensils, quick with hunger. They chattered as they worked, looking around them all the while. Oscar complained about Sally’s idea of a pretty campsite and they all laughed, even him; the place was spectacular.

  In the evening light the wild peaks glowed. Mount Agassiz, Thunderbolt Peak, Isosceles Peak, Columbine Peak, The Black Giant—each a complete masterpiece of form alone, each a perfect complement to the others. Huge boulders stood scattered on the undulating rock floor of Dusy Basin, and down at its bottom there was a narrow string of ponds and trees, still half-buried in snow. The sun lay just over the peaks to the west. The sky behind the mountains was twilight blue, and all the snow on the peaks was tinted a deep pink. Chaos generating order, order generating chaos; who could say which was which in such alpenglow?

  As they made camp the conversation kept returning to water. Sally Tallhawk, it was clear, was obsessed with water. Specifically, with the water situation in California, a Gordian knot of law and practice that no one could ever cut apart. To learn the system, manipulate it, explain it—this was her passion.

  In California water flows uphill toward money, she told them. This had been the primary truth of the system for decades. Most states used riparian water law, where landowners have the right to water on their land. That went back to English common law, and a landscape with lots of streams in it. But California and the other Hispanic states used parts of appropriative water law, which came from dry Mexico and Spain, and which recognized the rights of those who first made a beneficial, consumptive use of water—it didn’t matter where their land was in relation to it. In this system, later owners of land couldn’t build anything to impede the free passage of water to the original user. And so money—particularly old money—had its advantage.

  “So that’s how LA could take water from Owens Valley,” Doris said.

  The tents were up, sleeping bags out. They gathered around Kevin and the stove with the materials for dinner.

  “Well, it’s more complex than that. But essentially that’s right.”

  But in the end, Tallhawk told them, the water loss did Owens Valley a kind of good. LA tried to compensate for its appropriation by making the valley into something like a nature preserve. And so the valley missed all the glories of twentieth century southern California civilization. Then, when water loss threatened the native desert plants of the valley, Inyo County sued LA, and the courts decided in Inyo’s favor. This led to new laws being passed in Sacramento, laws that gave control of Inyo’s water back to it. But by this time feelings about growth and development had changed, and the valley towns went about rebuilding according to their own sense of value. “The dry years saved us from a lot of crap.”

  Oscar said to Kevin and Doris, “You’ll have to remember that if we lose this case.”

  Doris shook her head irritably. “It’s not the same. We won’t be able to go back from a situation like ours.”

  Tallhawk said, “You can never be sure of that. We’re working now on the final arrangements for the removal of the Hetch Hetchy dam, for instance. That was the biggest defeat ever for the environmental movement in California, right back at its start—a valley described as a second Yosemite, drowned so San Francisco could have a convenient water supply. John Muir himself couldn’t stop that one. But now we’re making them store the water in a couple of catchments downstream, and when that’s done they’ll drain Hetch Hetchy and bring that valley back out into the light of day, after a century and a half. The ecologists say the valley floor will recover in fifty to a hundred years, faster if they truck some of the mud out into the San Joaquin as fertilizer. So you see—some disasters can be reversed.”

  “It would be better to avoid disaster in the first place,” Kevin said.

  “Undoubtedly,” Tallhawk said. “I was just reminding you that there’s not too many things that are irrevocable, when you’re talking about the waterscape. Water flows forever, so there is a resilience there we can rely on.”

  “Glen Canyon next, eh?” Oscar said.

  “My God, yes!” Tallhawk cried, and laughed.

  The sun disappeared. It got cold fast. The sky turned a dark velvet blue that seemed to crackle where it met the glowing white snow ridges. Steam rose from the pot on the stove, and they could smell the stew.

  “But in El Modena…” Kevin said.

  “In El Modena, I don’t know.”

  Then the stew bubbled over, and it was declared ready. They spooned it into cups and ate. Tallhawk had brought a bottle of red wine along, and they drank it gratefully.

  “Can’t we use water to stop Alfredo’s plan?” Kevin asked as he finished eating.

  “Maybe.”

  It was strange but true, she told them: Orange County had a lot of water. It was one of the best water districts in the state, in terms of groundwater conservation.

  “What does that mean, exactly?” Kevin asked.

  “Well, do you understand what groundwater is?”

  “Water under the ground?”

  “Yes, yes. But not in pools.”

  She stood, waved her arms at the scene, talking as she pulled her down jacket from her pack. Walked in circles around them, looking at the peaks.

  Soil is permeable, she said, and the rock below soil is also permeable, right down to solid bedrock, which forms the bottom of groundwater basins. Water fills all the available space in permeable rock, percolating everywhere it can go. And it flows downhill as it does on the surface, not as quickly, but just as definitely. “Imagine Owens Valley is a big trench between the ranges, which it is. Filled almost halfway up with rock and soil eroded out of the mountains. The San Joaquin Valley is the same way, only much bigger. These are immense reservoirs of water, then, only the water level lies below the soil level, at least in most places. Geologists and hydrologists have charted these groundwater basins everywhere, and there are some huge ones in California.

  “Now some are self-contained, they don’t flow downstream. There’s enormous amounts of water in these, but they’re only replenished by rainfall, which is scarce out here. If you pump water you empty basins like those. The Ogdalilla basin under Oklahoma was one of those, and it was pumped dry like an oil field, which is why they’re so desperate for the Columbia’s water now.

  “Anyway, you have to imagine this underground saturation, this underground movement.” She stretched her arms forward and reached with her fingers, in a sort of unconscious groundwater dance. “The shapes of the basin bottoms sometimes bring the water closer to the surface—if there’s an underground ridge of impermeable bedrock, and the groundwater is flowing downhill over this ridge, water gets pushed to the surface, in the very top of a giant slow-motion waterfall. That’s how you get artesian wells.”

  Silence as she walked around the ca
mp. Now it seemed they could hear the subterranean flow, murmuring beneath them, a deep bass to the wind’s tremolo.

  “And El Modena?” Kevin said.

  “Well, when a groundwater basin drains into the sea, there’s a strange situation; the water doesn’t really drain very much, because there’s water pressure on both sides. Fresh water forces itself out if there’s flow coming in from upstream, but if not … well, the only thing that keeps sea water from reversing the flow and pushing into the ground under the land is the pressure of the fresh water, pouring down.

  “Now Orange County’s basin doesn’t have a whole lot of water coming into it any more. Riverside takes a lot before it reaches Orange County, as do all the other cities upstream. And agriculture in Orange County itself took a lot of water from the very start of settlement. They pumped more than was replenished, which was easy to do. But the pressure balance at the coastline was altered, and sea water began to leach inland. Wells near the coast turned salty. There’s no way to stop that kind of intrusion except to keep the basin full, so that the pressure outward is maintained. So the Orange County Water District was formed, and their job was to keep the groundwater basin healthy, so all their wells wouldn’t turn to salt. This was back in the 1920s. They were given the taxing and allocation powers necessary to do the job, and the right to sue cities upstream. And they went at it with a kind of religious fervor. They did it as well as any water district in California, despite all the stupidity going on above ground in that area. And so you have a healthy basin under you.”

  They had finished eating. They cleaned up the cups and the pot; their hands got wet, and quickly they got cold. They scrambled to get into the down jackets and bunting pants that Tallhawk’s department had provided. Then they sat on their groundpads, sleeping bags bunched around them, making a circle around the stove, which served as their campfire. The great arc of peaks still glowed with some last remnant of light, under a dark sky. Sally pulled out a small bottle of brandy and passed it around, continued:

  “It means that you live on an enormous pool of water, renewed all the time by OCWD. They buy water from us and from LA, and pour most of it right into the ground. Store it there. They keep the pressure regulated so very little of it is lost to the sea; there’s a balance of pressures at the coastline. So the artesian wells that gave Fountain Valley its name will never come back, and no one there would want them to! But you have the water you need. It’s strange, because it’s a desert coastline with hardly any rainfall. But the OCWD planned for a population increase that other forces balked—the population increase never occurred, and so there’s water to spare now. Strange but true.”

  “So water won’t help us stop them?” Kevin said, disappointed.

  “Not a pure scarcity. But Oscar says you have a resolution banning the further purchase of water from LA. You could try to stand on that.”

  “Like Santa Barbara?”

  “Santa Barbara slowed development by turning off the tap, yes. But they’re in a different situation—they stayed out of the California Water Project, and they don’t buy water from LA, and they don’t have much of a groundwater basin. So they’re really limited, and they’ve made a conscious decision not to change that. It works well if you have those initial conditions. But Orange County doesn’t. There’s a lot of water that was brought into the area before these issues were raised, and that water is still available.”

  Kevin and Doris looked at each other glumly.

  * * *

  They listened to the wind, and watched the stars pop into existence in a rich blue sky. On such a fine night it was a shame to get into the tents, so they only shifted into their sleeping bags, and lay on the groundpads watching the sky. The snow patches scattered among the rocks shone as if lit from within. It seemed possible to feel them melt, then rush into the ground beneath them, to fall down the slope into Le Conte Canyon and seep a slow path to the sea, in invisible underground Columbias. Kevin felt a stirring in him, the full-lunged breathlessness that marked his love for El Modena’s hills, extending outward to these great peaks. Interpenetration with the rock. He was melting like the snow, seeping into it. In every particulate jot of matter, spirit, dancing …

  “So what do you suggest, Sally?” Doris finally said.

  “We’d like our town to end up as nice as Bishop,” Kevin added. “But with people like Alfredo running things…”

  “But he’s not really running things, right?”

  “No, but he is powerful.”

  “You’ve got to expect a lot of resistance to what you’re trying to do. Saving the land for its own sake goes against the grain of white American thought, and so it’s a fight that’ll never end. Why not grow if we can, why not change things completely? A lot of people will never understand the answer to that question, because to them a good life only means more things. They have no feeling for the land. We have an aesthetic of wilderness now, but it takes a certain kind of sensibility to feel it.”

  “So in our case…” Kevin prompted, feeling anxious.

  “Well.” Tallhawk stood up, reached for the nearly empty brandy bottle. “You could try endangered species. If there is any kind of endangered species inhabiting your hill, that would be enough. The Endangered Species Act is tough.”

  “I don’t think Rattlesnake Hill is like to have any,” Doris said. “It’s pretty ordinary.”

  “Well, look into it. They stopped a freeway down near your area because of a very ordinary-looking lizard that happens to be rare.

  “Then the California Environmental Quality Act is a good chance. Under the terms of the act, environmental impact reports come early in the process, and once you have one, you can use it.”

  “But if it’s not particularly favorable to us?” Oscar asked, sounding sleepy.

  “You could consider going to the National Trust for Land, or the Nature Conservancy—they lend assistance to movements like yours, and they have the money to fight large developers. You could maybe convince them to bid against the development if it comes to that.”

  “The town itself owns all the land,” Doris said.

  “Sure. But these groups can help you with lobbying and campaigning when the issue comes to a vote, and they could even pay to lease it.”

  “That would be good.”

  “But there’s nothing we could use to stop them before a referendum?” Kevin asked. “I’m just scared Alfredo would win. He’s good at that.”

  “Well, the environmental stuff I mentioned. Or you could see if the hill has some unique water properties, like a spring.”

  “It doesn’t,” Kevin said.

  “You could try drilling a spring on the sly.”

  She laughed at the long silence.

  “Well it’s a thought, right? Here, have some brandy. One swallow left each. You’ll think of something. If not, let me know and we’ll come down and threaten this guy. Maybe we can offer you a discount on Owens Valley water if you leave the hilltop alone. Inyo County influencing southern Californian politics, I like that!” She laughed. “Or find a sacred ancient Indian burial mound or the like. Except I don’t think the Gabrielinos were into that kind of thing. Or if they were, we don’t know about it.”

  Kevin shook his head. “The hillside is basically empty. I’ve been all over it. I’ve hung out on that hill ever since I was a kid, I’ve crawled all over it.”

  “Might be fossils,” Oscar said.

  “You’d have to make a world-class find,” Tallhawk said. “El Modena tar pits. I’d try to rely on something a bit more solid if I were you.”

  They thought about it, listening to wind over rock, over snow. Listening to water seep into the ground.

  “Ready for tomorrow’s match?” Tallhawk asked Oscar.

  Oscar was a Falstaffian mound, he looked like one of the boulders surrounding them. “I’ve never been readier,” he muttered.

  “Match?” Kevin said. “What’s this? Going to be in a chess match, Oscar?”

  Tall
hawk laughed.

  “It is like chess,” Oscar murmured, “only more intricate.”

  “Didn’t you know the redneck festival starts tomorrow?” Tallhawk asked Kevin and Doris.

  “No.”

  “Tomorrow is opening day for hunting season; in fact, we’ll have to haul ass out of here to avoid getting shot by some fool. Bishop celebrates opening day with age-old customs. Jacked-up pick-up trucks painted in metallic colors, with gun racks in their back windows—fifty cases of whiskey, shipped in from Kentucky—tomorrow night’ll be wild. That’s one reason I wanted to come up here tonight. Get a last taste of quiet.”

  They lay stretched out in their bags.

  Kevin listened to the wind, and looked around at the dark peaks poking into the night sky. Suddenly it was clear to him that Sally had had a reason to bring them up here to have this talk; that this place itself was part of the discourse, part of what she wanted to say. The university of the wilderness. The spine of California, the hidden source of the south’s wealth. This hard wild place …

  Around them the wind, spirit of the mountains, breathed. Water, the soul of the mountains, seeped downward. Rock, the body of the mountains, stood fast.

  Held in a bowl like God’s linked hands, they slept.

  * * *

  The next day they hiked back over the pass and down the trail, and drove a little gas car down to Tallhawk’s house in Bishop to clean up.

  As dusk fell they walked downtown, and found that Bishop had filled with people. It seemed like the entire population of eastern California must have been there, dressed in blue jeans, pendletons, cowboy boots, cowboy hats, camouflaged flak jackets, bright orange hunter’s vests, square dancing dresses, rodeo chaps, bordello robes, cavalry uniforms, animal furs, southern belle ball gowns, Indian outfits—if it had ever been seen in the American West before, it was there now. Main Street was packed with pickup trucks, all track-free, running on grain alcohol and making a terrific noise and stink. Their drivers revved engines constantly to protest the long periods of gridlock. “A traffic-jam parade,” Oscar said.