Big Valley (and Other Valleys?) - Now (greatest ruin) and Then (greatest natural wealth)

Start with this section, it being the middle and heart of all our California, the innermost ring.

Things to highlight: (and contrast past and present)

Meadowlark

Burrowing owl

Swainson’s hawk?

Lesser nighthawk?

Magpie

Crow

Swarms of black birds including starling, redwing, [?], brewers, crow, cowbird at the feedlots.

Pheasant, Pd, starlings

Swarms of water birds (ducks, geese, cranes, swans, coots, dows, killdeer, ibis, pelicans, cormorants)

Horned lark, savannah sparrow

Once upon a time—Pleistocene Megafauna Central.

Oh the hoov’ed herds—darting dashing antelope, also deer and tule elk, grizzly and wolf and coyote and badger, skunk and vole and ground squirrel and kit fox, cottontail and [?] rabbit.

For a brief moment augmented by the great herds of cattle and horses and sheep and soon nothing but those. But all this was a drop in the mammalian bucket compared at what the first Indians saw when they got here, spear in hand. The tar pits of McKittrick and La Brea give a glimpse (and not only big mammals but big birds as well—and as the big meat disappeared so did the big meat-eaters, bird and mammal alike. All the little things are still here.) Condor squeaked through.

The rivers, delta, and great tulares, and the lake, hog-wallow and mima mound, braided slough and vernal pool.

N to S. rain gradient.

Sacramento Valley only half as big as San Joaquin but twice as wet. All alluvial except the Sutter Buttes. All the rivers pouring in from the East side in their own rich alluvial fans and oak parklands and happy little [?]

One central aspect of the Central Valley not much considered now (because largely a thing of the past) is the great runs of salmon, and other fish too, and shellfish, and river mammals (otter and beaver and people).

Now flat and boring, once lumpy and exciting. Now dry and alkaline, once sweet with artesian wells. Now a checkerboard of sterile control, making money, once an artwork of natural pattern, uncontrolled, a multicolored endless garden, making real wealth, buzzing with untold myriads of life of all forms.

North-end symbolized by clover, south end by saltbush, whole thing by goldfields in spring, tarweeds in summer, and vernal pools throughout. Olive and rice at N, citrus and cotton at S. Everywhere marsh vegetation.

Subtle belt of low, rolling hills along E. margin for grazing, thank God. Typical [?]: Lasthenia, blue dicks, clover, Castilleja exserta, poppy and lupine?, sheets of Allocarya, native annual grass as well as perennial. Then (first) oats, then filaree, mustard, and all the rest.

Firstly, scene of greatest natural wealth. Finally, scene of greatest ruin.