For Introduction: Cocentric Californias

In discussing the human (i.e. cultural) and biological features of  “our” California, it helps to have reference to areas outside—the yin is only visible by virtue of a contrasting yang. Our own Anglo-Californian (or if you prefer Judeo-Californian) culture makes too glaring a contrast. 

For the purposes of this book, which focuses on the most “typical” central part, most of the descriptive and even more so, the prescriptive material will apply most exactly to that region, with ever-diminishing ripples of pertinence outward from this center.

For descriptive purposes, the most “Californian” part of California consists of a long N-S oval surrounding the Great Valley and its foothills on all sides, up to about 4,000 ft. elevation (to include such eminently habitable spots as Yosemite Valley) but most applicable under 2,000 ft.—i.e. where snow is a rarity. This is a subset (albeit the heart) of the great biogeographic region known as the California Floristic Province (CAFP).

The other three main regions of which are:

1) N and NW forest region, to SW Oregon

2) Hi-elevation forest, Sierran wall (barely into Nevada at Tahoe)

3) Southern California bight (including its own mountain wall) to Baja

These regions are with the exception of the first ?, much more like the “heart” portion of the CAFP than they are like what lies outside, i.e., the Baja, Colorado, and Mojave Deserts and Great Basin (and maybe Pacific NW). 

Even so, in cultural if not geographical terms, these “outside” regions are still more similar to the California Floristic Province than they are to the Pueblo and Plains cultures even farther beyond. Once again, dividing lines aren’t as sharp to the north, although Northern California is a long way, culturally, from the rich and majestic totem-pole cultures of coastal BC and Alaska, the difference is more in degree than in kind, whereas the poor, scattered, desert scroungers of the Great Basin and the mounted warrior/tipi culture across the Great Divide are a world apart. To be sure, there is a great mountain range—the Rockies—separating Plains from Great Basin, and no such formidable barrier on the North Coast.

For our purposes here, then, we will concentrate on the “heart” of California, with lesser emphasis on the Northward or Southward extensions of the CAFP, and venture into more distant regions only by way of instructive comparisons that may be germane to some part of the discussion (and maybe Eastward).