Patricia Damery's Blog, page 2

Acting for our Future Generations

Was 2014 only my awakening to the need for environmental activism in Napa County, or was it also a considerable citizen shift in consciousness?

2014 was the year Walt Ranch hit the public eye. I learned about Walt Ranch only when I sought help after new neighbors decided to plant vines in an ancient oak savanna we share and upon which, with the former neighbor, we had placed a protective tree easement. I learned this threat to the forests and oak woodlands was happening all over the county and that others were organizing to protest impending development threatening the environment and community. In early 2015, some 13 citizen groups met at the Marriott in Napa, pledging to work together. It was one of the great silver linings for me of this period, meeting some of the brightest and most thoughtful people of our county, many of us retired. I think of this as the highest and best use of elders. Fruits of Eden: Field Notes: Napa Valley 1991-2021 was inspired by these people and this work.

“Walt Ranch is the epicenter of the biggest local environmental fight of recent memory,” Nancy Tamarisk writes in a Napa Sierra Club Group newsletter this month. “For nearly a decade, starting in 2014, Sierra Club led the vigorous opposition to this project, which outraged a large segment of the Napa community, invigorating such organizations as Napa Vision 2050 and Defenders of East Napa Watersheds (DENW). The fight created a network of trusted allies which still exists.”

Walt Ranch was the catalyst that brought many of us onto the streets. The project was massive: 2300 acres of wildlands, a biological hotspot, a wildlife corridor, and 28,000 mature trees at risk for 35 blocks of vineyard. For months and years, we protested before the leaping chrome rabbit glaring in the sun just south of St. Helena. When weekend guests came, I enlisted them to join us, holding signs, Chainsaw Wines. Halt Walt. Protect Rural Napa. My grandson Wesley’s favorite? Protect trees. My husband could still join us as we stood in the hot midday sun by Hall Winery or in front of the County Administration Building during hearings for the project. We packed the Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission chambers, lined up for hours of public comment, practiced for the 3-minute limit, and hired water, wildlife, and fire experts. Our numbers spilled into the overflow rooms of the building. Through years of hearings, appeals, and court action, the project was reduced to 14,000 mature trees with new mitigations for greenhouse gas emissions.

Ultimately, it was not the county who acted to protect our wild lands and watersheds, but the Halls, probably deciding this was no longer a good business decision. Let’s be clear: this is business as usual, not a governmental shift toward an ecological ethic. This is also true of a second big win this year, the county’s being forced by the courts to rescind the use permit for Mountain Peak Winery, which is now up for sale.

Business-as-usual is deadly. Why do we not yet realize this? We are no longer in a time we can proceed as we have for the last 200 years. Fossil fuels have warmed our planet, and we are in unprecedented climate chaos, resulting in non-linear heating. Forests and oak woodlands are our easy and greatest partners,  sequestering and holding carbon within their roots, trunks, and branches. We cannot afford to kill trees for anyone’s dream of a vineyard or any other development.

“We believe our environmental activism helped to depress the potential profit of Walt Ranch by decreasing the project acreage, adding costly greenhouse gas mitigations, and imposing delays and legal fees,” Tamarisk writes. “What else was achieved by our campaign to save Walt Ranch? At the very least, potential developers of Napa’s hillside watersheds were put on notice that environmentally unsound projects would face vigorous, expensive and prolonged opposition, resulting in delayed and diminished profits, and bad press. Developers were also reminded of the need to consult with the community early in their process to address concerns.”

Yes, there are enormous wins in the last few years. Two of the biggest projects have been stopped, not by our county’s concern for the environment and community, but by the network of citizens organized to protect our watersheds, forests and oak woodlands, and our community. Even if the decisions were for business reasons, the projects were stopped.

It is a new time. We have two new supervisors and will soon have a new CEO. Now let’s work with our Board of Supervisors and County Government to effectively and substantially recognize the stakes of climate chaos and the fact that if we do not champion the rights of ecosystems, we threaten our human existence on the planet.

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A Crystalline Hike in a Ancient Sparkling Forest

Last week, my grandsons Wesley, Sabien, and I visited the Petrified Forest near Calistoga, CA. We are in what Rudolf Steiner called the crystallization period, that fallow time between January 15 and February 15, when Earth is quiet and most receptive to the energies of the cosmos. Although I had not planned this timing, it was a magical time to visit a crystalline forest!

The term “petrified” betrays the energy of this ancient forest of redwoods and pine. 3.4 million years ago, Mount St. Helena exploded, dropping ash over the mature forest. Then, over millions of years, the ash became a kind of mineral silica slurry, the silica moving between the cells of the tissues and replacing them.

As we walked the trails of this family-run preserve, all three of us became mesmerized by the excavated fallen redwoods and pine sparkling in the sunlight, flecks of crystal shining like tiny stars. The bark and tree rings were so defined that it was hard (no pun intended) to distinguish trunks and logs of more recent trees from those turned to stone. 

But perhaps more impressive was the energy of the spot. The trail often was solidified ash, rich in iron, obsidian, and silica. We were walking on crystal. 

Quartz is amazing. Quartz crystal has electrical properties when mechanically compressed. Metaphysically, clear quartz is used in meditation for focus, amplification, and healing. It is said to facilitate the coordination of the right and left sides of the brain. The resulting consciousness is one receptive to Earth and all who reside here.

Some say the Fall from Paradise was not a fall from a participation mystique, or a merged unconscious unity but from a much more sophisticated consciousness. After this Fall, consciousness dimmed, a process that has resulted in devastating results to our environment. Rather than work with nature, listening intently and responding, humans have taken up an attitude of dominion over, justifying the exploitation of the earth. We have become increasingly removed from the earth and the heavens. Most of us have no idea on any given day the phase of the moon or what star is rising at sunrise.

Author and earth mound scholar Ross Hamilton states, “We do not yet understand the intellectual development and spiritual capacities of certain ancestral cultures located in various key locales around the world just six to five thousand years ago. We assume our forebears of prehistory inferior to us…we have been living in divorce from the ancient wisdom and in the process have literally lost the enlightenment once in possession of our forebears. With loss of light comes immediate loss of consciousness and memory…”(Hamilton, Star Mounds).

If there are places on earth to receive the light of our cosmos, I suspect this crystalline forest is one of those, and if there is a time to rest and quietly relearn how to listen, it’s now. Cosmic energies will bless you.

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“Christ”

Early in Donald’s and my marriage, we got a couple of pygmy goats, Natalie and Boris. As animals do, they stitched Donald and me into the fabric of our land. Each day we followed these little black psychopomps (yes, they led the way!) along deer trails through the oak and bay forest and into the stretches of oak savanna where we came to build our home. This experience of the Joy of Absolute Presence was the root beginning of my writing Fruits of Eden,

I wrote a series of poems about our experiences. The following is one of my favorites. That first winter with the goats, it rained a lot. Natalie and Boris hated rain. We had a small shed where we kept them at night, secure and warm. They would snuggle into the straw, the grassy scent permeating the air. The pungency of the shed reminded me of the Christmas story: it was here, in this most unlikely of places, that Jesus incarnated. 

We are in such a dark time on our planet. The natural cycle of life reminds us that this, too, changes. Spring comes. Winter is emersion in yin, an actively receptive state of being, like a psychic pregnancy.  It is now, in the darkest, coldest time of the year, that the turning happens, and Light begins to increase again.

But while we wait, there is so much to be gained by deeply experiencing the dark. Perhaps this is how the seed of new consciousness sprouts.  

CHRIST

Grey day and rain,  all night,  rain.  

I bring  aromatic oat hay fragrant from July fields

and the goats wait,  fat as potatoes from a week

of waiting.  Waiting… for sun.  The world is damp and sodden.  

I smooth the stiff hair along the spine

of each fat black body, each warm earth body,  

hunkered down in the darkened barn, 

one small window embroidered by Spider.

Pungent from a week of confinement, 

steamy from body heat and urine,

they nuzzle the fresh straw I bring, then sink deep into it, tucking stocky legs underneath, to ruminate and to wait…

Now I understand  why Christ was born somewhere like this, 

in our animalness, almond eyes glistening in the dim light, 

sturdy bodies full of vitality, gaining substance 

from the wait.  I understand

why It happens in the longest darkness, in the whisper 

of animal breath and the stinging scent of straw 

dampened by days of goats waiting out storms.

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Raising the Alarm: Charlie Toledo on Aquifers and Riparian Corridors: The disconnect

Below is a reprint of excerpts from a 2014 interview with Charlie Toledo, Executive Director of the Suscol Intertribal Council. What continues to be alarming is how our governing bodies override scientific knowledge in the face of perceived industry needs. We have witnessed this process over and over in Planning Commission and Board of Supervisor meetings. That famous lament from Supervisor Dillon during the appeal of Walt Ranch: IF ONLY WE KNEW THEN WHAT WE KNOW NOW.  

WE KNEW. WE TOLD YOU, EVEN WAY BACK WHEN!

How long will it take us to effectively KNOW the science and the wisdom put before us and to use that in the decisions made? Will the Napa County Climate Action Committee mobilize and make brave decisions to protect our environment? (See latest story on Napa County Climate Action Committee here.)

2014  INTERVIEW Excerpts ON AQUIFERS and RIPARIAN CORRIDORS

Charlie: We’re in the middle of a drought right now [2014].  I get my information from several sources.

Through Suscol Council, I was appointed to the Low Income Oversight Board, a committee of the CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission), which, of course, involves water. One of the committees that I am chair of is Climate Change. I am also an oversight person on the water.

For the last three years, I’ve been talking about the headwaters in California at the state level on this Board. We meet quarterly. I ask the questions that nobody’s asking. We had a speaker at this Board, Curt Schmutte, a Delta Bay water consultant from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. He got brought in because of the questions I was asking. He showed us this plan that California plans to implement. It will cost six billion plus dollars and perhaps ten times that amount in the end. [This is the plan to build a concrete tunnel to send more water to Southern California.] He kept stressing the importance of a riparian corridor: It reduces evaporation. It stabilizes the banks. It creates habitat for fish, crabs, and the lower parts of the food chain, so it’s really important.

At the end of his lecture, I asked, “You’re saying that the riparian corridors are a very important part of the river’s health and the water’s health. You say that in California we transport huge amounts of water from northern California to southern California. Those channels in the Delta Bay Water Project provide water for Sacramento, San Jose, Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, all of the central valley, all of those major cities and agriculture areas, the water for the lower part of the state, but also Napa. They take water from Lake Berryessa and Napa buys it back at the southern end.”

Everybody sitting on the Board looked at me because I was always talking about the importance of riparian corridors. Then I said, “You’re saying that the riparian corridors are an essential part of the health of the river and the maintenance of a healthy waterway?”

He said, “Yes.”

“Where are the riparian corridors in this plan?” I asked again.

Well, there’s no riparian corridor restoration in this six-billion-dollar plan.

I said, “Where are the plans to repair the riparian corridor within the city limits of Sacramento, which is a huge hunk of the Sacramento River?”

He said, “There’s no plan to re-establish a riparian corridor within the city limits of Sacramento.” Which is almost 30 miles of river.

Napa County and the City of Napa water supply came from Lake Berryessa and Rector Dam. In the 60’s when I was first moving to Napa, I remember the ranchers getting really upset. They said, “We’re selling them the water. Then we’re buying it back for more.” Which is how it is. Napa is dependent on Delta Bay water. They’re sucking up all this water and moving it without a riparian corridor. I forget what percentage of the water is lost to evaporation, but it’s a considerable amount, even 10%.

The next day we’re on the Delta Bay tour. We’re on a bus with all these people who make decisions about water and with the water experts in the state. We’re on the river, and these places where the water gets shuttled and fish get taken out of the water, so they don’t go through these filters. They’re actually trucking those fish 30 miles and then putting them back in the water, so they don’t go through this filtering thing. He showed us this huge map of the Sacramento Bay Delta and the water plan. It’s currently being quoted as a six-billion-dollar project to get it to transport more water to southern California.

Patricia: Okay.

Charlie: I know, it’s stunning.

Patricia: It is.

Charlie: These are the experts. If you’re not scared, then get scared.

Patricia: Yes.

Charlie: I karmically or spiritually end up in the weirdest places. Why did I move to Napa Creek and experience seven floods in ten years? Before the floods, during the floods, and after the floods, I’d walk the creek and walk the river. When your house is about to flood or if you’re evacuated, you can’t stop yourself from walking back and forth along the river. After the flood, my neighbor and I would walk through the creeks and rivers. We would talk about what could be done to prevent this.

Napa Creek is the oldest inhabited part of Napa County. Napa Valley is one of the oldest inhabited places in North America. There’s been habitation here for over 60,000 years. Napa Creek Confluence between Napa Creek and Napa River, where I lived for 17 years, is now referred to as downtown Napa Confluence. The oldest inhabited place, a place that did not used to flood. The native people would not have put themselves in a flood plain. What changed when the Europeans came is Europeans started putting asphalt and cement where the marshes, trees, and wetlands had been. The wetlands and marches held the water, allowing the water to re-saturate and keeping the water from rushing and flooding.

Indigenous people lived close to water. They lived close to springs and rivers. If the river were going to flood too much, they would just move up a little bit, but they lived in permanent villages.  For 60,000 years, people inhabited this valley and managed the watershed by harvesting of the willow, harvesting and cleaning up the blackberries, and then a perennial burning every three years to all the areas, so that real shrubby brush and stuff that causes all the wildfires now, that would all have been eliminated. The willow was used for basketry and houses. These plants were harvested for boats, housing, and baskets.

All of that was being managed. All of California was fully inhabited, and all was a managed agricultural preserve. A very, very important part of watershed management is trees. You cannot talk about water without talking about trees. Trees have been full scale eliminated from industrialized communities. The water is not being held. The banks aren’t stabilized.

ON AQUIFERS: 

Charlie: Now what’s happened is the underground aquifers in California, actually underground rivers, mostly fed and established by the Ice Age water melting, are empty. In Napa those aquifers are at Cuttings Wharf Road, out at the Avenues. Those aquifers have been used up. The headwaters, which is where the river starts in the area around Cortina Rancheria west of the town of Williams, is the headwaters for Putah Creek, one of the main water connections for the Bay Delta area. But the headwaters are going dry. They now get saltwater at a hundred feet.

Patricia: Where’s Putah Creek?

Charlie: Putah Creek starts up around Williams, which is northwest of Sacramento. Then Clear Lake is actually part of Putah Creek. Putah Creek feeds out of Clear Lake, comes down through Pope Valley and Chiles Valley and then at Rector Dam it turns over and goes into what is now known as Lake Berryessa. I think there’s seven creeks that go into Lake Berryessa. Putah Creek is the main one. We’re talking about the headwaters of Putah Creek, which is the main feeder to Berryessa, which is one of the largest feeders to the Delta Bay Water. I just got e-mails two weeks ago from my friends up in Mendocino County. Their headwaters of Eel River up in Round Valley are going dry. Up in Hoopa the Klamath headwaters are going dry. We’re talking about the major rivers. The Klamath River, the north fork of the Eel River, Putah Creek, the Russian River, same thing.

From County of Napa

You’ve got the headwaters where the rivers form, where the water starts. That’s a spring basically. Then you have the end of the river where the water reaches the ocean. Either way, when that water stops, at the headwaters or at ocean, that means the river is dying. Now the Colorado River, which is one of the main water supplies of New Mexico, Arizona and Los Angeles, ends in Mexico 90 miles from the ocean. They’ve been losing 10-20 miles a year for the last ten years. They’re expecting that the aquifers that supply Las Vegas are going to be dry in the next three years. They know this. I was at a tour of Hoover Dam. The guy who gave the tour of Hoover Dam said Las Vegas has three more years of water.

Patricia: What will happen then?

Charlie: I was at the UN in 2005 for Human Rights, Women’s Human Rights issues. As I was touring, there were some people from Japan whom we were orienting on how to work within the UN. There were no sessions at the time that I was giving them the tour, so I said “Let’s just go into this one, it’s on environmental water.” I said, “That’s my key area of interest, next to human rights.”

We went into this global conference. There were representatives from every country in the world. The presenters were representing agriculture, economy, environment, industry. There were four levels that they presented.

This hall was completely full with all the translators and all the people with their flags and countries that they represented. We were just in the peanut gallery, sitting there and listening, not in a position to talk. This guy was facilitating and all the big people were introducing themselves. There were probably at least a thousand people in this meeting.

The guy stood up who was chairing the meeting and said, “Well, after researching the last five years, we are on the verge of an eminent global water crisis.”

Then the guy from industry said, you know given all the industry and the technology, we are on the verge of an eminent global water crises.

Then the farming people said that the way that people are farming now— and we’re not talking city or state, we’re talking global—We’re on the verge of an eminent water crisis.

All the four representatives of these four different venues said the same thing.

The guy chairing in front of all of these thousands of people and all their lawyers and translators, asked, “Given this information, are there any questions from the audience?” Silence. He repeated the question. Silence. Well, could we have a discussion among the presenters about what the possibilities of action might be based on these conclusions? You’ve all reached the same conclusion, could there be a discussion? They had nothing further to add.

Patricia: It’s so big. We can’t get our minds around it.

Charlie: This was in 2005. It’s eight years after this UN meeting. Four months ago was our Delta meeting. We meet quarterly at the state level, trying to address the people at the local level. Forget Peru, India and China, who are out of water. The Yellow River, which is the main supply of water for China, does not reach the ocean, which means the river is dying. If you cut off blood from your foot, how long does it take for your foot to fall off? How long is it going to take if you leave the foot attached before the whole distal foot goes systemic and become infected?

 

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The Art of Dish Washing with Charlie Toledo

Have you ever washed dishes with Charlie Toledo? You learn what Water is Sacred means. She wipes the dish using as little water as possible with soap that will not contaminate the water and then carefully rinses. You do not wash: you witness. She does the work, making sure Water is properly treated.

How would things be different if we all adopted practices that respected Water? Washing dishes with Charlie has changed my way of treating water in my home, and just in time, too! The drought and the continued pumping and drilling of wells around us have drained our sub-basin acquirer to the point that, for the first time last year, we had to truck water to our ranch. Necessity also changes our ways.

Eight years ago, in the fall of 2014, California’s water bond Proposition One was on the ballot and, subsequently, overwhelmingly won. I interviewed Charlie during this period for a series of articles about Water. I am copying below one of these interviews. Charlie’s prescience in these matters of water security shines through in these interviews. Eight years later, the drought is worse. We appear to be still doing the things that got us into this mess in the first place: in other words, business as usual. Daily we read hair-raising stories about Water:  “Officials fear ‘complete doomsday scenario’ for drought-stricken Colorado River” (The Washington Post, December 1, 2022); “Drought Alters Landscape: Rural Communities Will Bear the Brunt” (The Napa Valley Register, December 1, 2022). Rural wells are going dry, and we keep permitting more and more projects and hotels. Spots of the Napa River are drying in the summer near deep project wells. Our Napa sub-basin has been in overdraft for years now. 

I remember Charlie’s words, words that have become mantras. Water is Sacred. Water is Sacred. Maybe it is time we all repeat, all together now: Water is Sacred. Water is Sacred.

Interview: Charlie Toledo on California Water Legislation, October 2014

Patricia: We have a water bond on the ballot in California in the November 2014 election, and there’re three new state groundwater monitoring laws that are going to go into effect on January 1, 2015. I would like you to give us some of your thoughts about these plans and about what is being done.

Charlie: I think what is being done and what indigenous people would like to see being done are two different things. What’s changing that’s good for native elders and native people like myself is finally a hard look at the massive, massive amounts of water from Northern California being transferred to Central and Southern California. That put things off balance. Water is a living being and where water goes and what it does when it falls from the sky, and it rolls down the creeks, rolls down the mountains from the creeks, and the creeks flow to the river, the river to the sea: All of that is part of that continuum of a healthy body.

Looking at water as a sacred body—that is what is being put out by the indigenous people right now. What would it be? Like a campaign, really. In advertising, you have to get a little jingle that you have to repeat over and over. So what we were saying that didn’t really work is, “Water is a living being. Water is a living entity.” That seems too complex. Now people are just saying, “Water is sacred. Water is sacred. It is not a commodity. It should not and can not be bought and sold.”

So looking at water as sacred: when you look at the water bond [Proposition One], I agree with the Sierra Club position that some of those things in the proposition are really good, like the restoration of watersheds and regional water management, storm management and groundwater management.

But the damming, storing, or transporting of water is harmful. [One-third of the bond money could be used for damming and transporting water.] What’s happening now is the end result of a hundred years of mismanagement. We created a system that was very brilliant. It’s amazing that in the 1800’s they engineered this project to store water and transport it hundreds of miles into desert areas. But it’s not sustainable.

I spoke last time about the headwaters going dry. That headwaters is where the water is born. It’s like the brain of the body. So when the blood stops going to the brain, it doesn’t take long for the body to die. Usually about three to five minutes. Maybe ten minutes depending on how fast (much) blood is being drained. So now the headwaters in seven places I know of are going dry. They dry up at the end of the season, and now, with the drought, that’s critical.

Even without the drought, this was already happening. The current water management system is not reaching its end point of sustainability. The real solution is that water has to be managed regionally. Just like we were talking about emergencies. Emergencies need to be handled by neighbors and neighborhoods in the counties. The discussions that I’ve been part of are, in part, where the state is coming to that waters have to be managed regionally and not be transported. So there is a movement that I think is important to access groundwater. To ensure, somehow, the quality and safety of the groundwater being used.

One of the things that had never been done in California to date was the registering or monitoring groundwater for regional sharing. What is unfortunate is California is predominately— three quarters— desert. The whole Central Valley. The whole southern part of the state is an extreme desert. So it would not, and can not, support the life forms that it has right now. The major cities. Los Angeles, Fresno, Bakersfield. All of those cities, even Santa Barbara, are just out there on a desert rim.

What will happen, and has happened historically, is that there will start to be population shifts. People say that can’t happen. Humans have been on the earth for a hundred thousand years. What we’ve always done, collectively, is move around. If there are water shortages, if it gets too cold, if it gets to this, to that, the people move. A mass movement to urban areas has occurred in the last thirty years globally.

Most of Los Angeles is less than thirty years old. [In 1900, the Los Angeles census was 102,479. In 2006 – The city population was 3,976,071. Los Angeles County’s population was 10,245,572, by far the nation’s largest county. Most of Fresno is less than thirty years old. That’s not even one person’s lifetime. So we can’t attach huge emotional attachment to the places. Part of what will happen is that either we’re moving the water or we’re moving. Our lives are dependent on water.

I think what’s really, really important, and what is being stressed in the discussions I’ve been in, is the restoration of the riparian corridors. Which is trees. Trees hold the water in place. They attract rain. They block evaporation. They do all kinds of things that are very, very important to water conservation.

The way that we’ve been using water is unsustainable. We need to cut our water usage by 60%. I used to think 40%, but now I think 60%. In January 2014, Governor Brown asked people for voluntary water conservation of 20%. Most communities have conserved 6-10%. I think we need 60%.

My suggestion has been that we have to start shutting the water off. Just have water available two or three hours a day. Then that will make people realize that our relationship to water in this generation, which I would call from 1850 to 2014, has been out of balance. We think of water as free. We think of it as this waste product. We allow the rainwater to rush down gutters. We’ve asphalted areas that used to absorb water and conserve water within the Earth. All of those practices need to stop.

Using water to wash off a driveway, to water a golf course: those practices can stop. I think most of us, knowing the severity of coming out of this denial, this huge, huge denial that we are in, will adapt our behavior quickly if we can understand the crisis. I think that most people do not understand the crisis level.

Patricia: These are radical ideas.

Charlie: They are.

Patricia: Knowing what you know from having been on various boards: Are these ideas going into our committees and lawmakers?

Charlie: I have seen Governor Brown at all these meetings where Native American Elders and multiple generations of Native Americans have gathered. He’s right in the middle of it, and he’s listening. He’s scared. He knows. People have been attacking him. His comment several months ago, probably in the early spring of 2014, “I can’t make it rain.” He understands it’s more than just rain. It’s water management.

I sit on a state advisory Board that functions as a consumer oversight. When I started bringing this up three years ago and asking questions, people were thinking, “No. You’re fanatical.” Now that’s not the thought anymore. People are realizing, “OK. This lady’s not crazy. This system is not sustainable.” What they are coming to is that water has to be managed regionally and much more conservatively.

Patricia: Now, when you say regionally, what would be a region? What does that look like?

Charlie: It would probably be a watershed. You think of Napa. I think Napa has seven watersheds.

A watershed is where the water comes from the sky. Where it runs down the hills. Where it springs from the ground for any spring. What water’s available? There are aquifers. Las Vegas has an aquifer. Unfortunately, they’ve just about tapped it out in less than twenty years.

They’ve used water in ways that are not sustainable. So their aquifers are going to be dry. Los Angeles still has aquifers that they can use.

So the watershed is usually based on how and where the water flows.

Patricia: It’s not unlike local food supplies.

Charlie: Exactly. Exactly.

Patricia: Yes.

Charlie: Then that’s one of the things that’s come up that I think is important. One of the brilliant Commissioners of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has made this connection. She is at the forefront of all of this thinking. She’s an amazing commissioner for the CPUC, and she talks about the nexus of power. That who are using the most power are the energy companies. Electricity uses lots of water. They are the main consumer of water in the State of California. Furthermore, the biggest use of electricity is water. So water uses the most electricity. The transportation and storage of water use the most electricity in the State of California.

She calls this the nexus of power. That we have to break that nexus of dependency. Somehow stop using so much water to generate electricity. Stop using so much electricity to transport and store water. That’s where it comes to a regional idea. Then when I say the thing about having water available two hours in the morning and two hours at night, people from Mexico say, “That’s how I grew up. That’s how I live.”

People from Africa say, “Well, we only get it once a day for twenty minutes.” Then you use that water for the rest of the day. In places like Bali and throughout Asia, many have to collect their own rainwater. Then once during the dry season, they can have water delivered to their cistern. So whatever water they have, they must manage it throughout the year. Each person or each family is responsible for his/their own water. That’s how it is in most parts of Africa.

People have to haul their water. Usually, young girls haul water. That’s maybe five gallons of water. That’s the family’s water for the whole day. That person might spend three hours gathering and hauling the water. So the fact that we would have water on tap is still much easier than two-thirds of the world.

National Geographic just did an article on water. The whole western part of the United States is in severe drought. And then there’s the issue of global water shortage. These ideas may seem radical, but as time goes by, they’ll seem less and less radical, and people will regret how we’ve wasted water. We can still conserve it if we realize, “Well. Water is a limited resource.” The thought in the legislative battles is we’re going to share the water that we have.

Some people say, “No, we’re not.” People will start hoarding water. Do you want to live and watch everyone else in the state go dry? I think it does shift our thinking to sharing the water and using much, much less of it than we use and have used in the past forty and fifty years. We won’t bathe in huge bathtubs of water.

Patricia: That sharing is not regional. It’s still moving water.

Charlie: That’s where I’m thinking that people will start having to move from the cities. Like the earthquake we just experienced: We can talk about the permanence of the material world, but the material world is not permanent. Like the tsunamis in Japan: I mean, that village was gone, and the people aren’t going back in there. China, when they had their huge earthquakes. Because they’ve had their huge migration into cities in the last fifteen years, after a major earthquake, a lot of people just went right back to the rural areas. They walked right back home.

I think that is what we’re going to see. For fifty years, we have seen mass migration from rural to urban areas. Most of the population used to live in rural areas everywhere in the world. Now there’s been a transference to living in crowded, dense places in the cities. I think that might just reverse. People will leave and live in smaller communities. Or else, as I said, water will just be used very differently.

One of my friends, a Native American Elder, has been working on these water issues with me for the last thirty years. He now understands what Mark Twain said, “Whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting.” We’re going to move back to the concept that water is very precious. That every drop of rain is very important. Then along with that, as I said, we can’t talk about water without talking about trees. The trees attract the water, they attract the rain, and they hold the water in the soil. There are places like Findhorn and garden projects in Ireland and England where their gardening practices revived water.

Golden Gate Park in San Francisco: That’s a place where people thought, “No, you can’t grow in the sand dunes.” Doing that conscious, sustainable farming and gardening that you’re familiar with. That you can create food and water in places where it wasn’t. All through the deserts of Afghanistan and Western Asia where there isn’t water. The oasis becomes very sacred. People might live on a gallon of water for a week. Which is a much different relationship than we have now.

I think we can do it. As humans, we have the capacity to adapt and change. So I think that’s what will happen. 

Charlie Toledo, Executive Director of the Suscol Intertribal Council in Napa, CA, helped author the Watershed Development plan for Napa County in its seminal years, 1992-1995, and more recently serves on the State Low Income Oversight Board, a committee of the California Public Utilities Commission. For more than 30 years, she has served as a peace activist, community organizer, and healer, dedicated to preserving Native American culture and building the cohesiveness of indigenous groups in the Napa area.

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Great News! When Citizens Stay Onboard!

Great news! In a time that feels like misinformation, ignorance, and greed rule, something outstanding has happened! On Tuesday, November 8, 2022, citizens of Napa County will witness the fruits of many years of well-informed protests, advocacy, and legal action. The Board of Supervisors (BOS) will vote to rescind the use permit for Mountain Peak Winery!

How this came about is a story of perseverance by a group of citizens. Part of that story is chronicled in my just-released book Fruits of Eden: Field Notes Napa Valley 1991-2021. The Mountain Peak Winery site is near the dead-end of six and a half mile, windy, substandard Soda Canyon Road. The project was one of the largest winery event centers to receive a use permit in recent years. During use permit hearings, residents of Soda Canyon Road and larger Napa County sat for hours in the administrative chamber and overflow rooms, often packed to capacity, as person after person lined up to give their three-minute comment. We cheered each other on as individuals talked about the dangers of increased traffic on narrow Soda Canyon Road, local water shortage, water quality in the reservoir that supplies the Veteran’s Home and Yountville, and the impact of such increased intensity of use on the pristine ecology of the area. After the 2017 Atlas Peak Fire, we gasped as residents described harrowing escapes after fallen trees blocked the road and heroic evacuations by helicopter near the location of Mountain Peak. Some of these residents formed Protect Rural Napa to address development issues more broadly.

Nevertheless, the Planning Commission granted the use permit in January 2017, and BOS denied the appeal by Protect Rural Napa in August 2017. On September 22, 2017, members of Protect Rural Napa identified as “The Soda Canyon Group” filed suit to compel an Environmental Impact Report (EIR), citing a lack of consideration of fire danger, piling vast amounts of cave spoils within feet of two blue line creeks, a lack of biological resource analysis, insufficient and inaccurate analysis of groundwater extraction, and a disputed analysis of traffic and noise impacts.

The case was finally decided on March 23, 2022, after a series of back-and-forth actions between the Napa County Superior Court and the BOS. The Napa County Superior Court requires that an EIR be done before the project can be permitted. (Read Bill Hocker’s archive of the events here. The sequence of actions is worth the read.) The land is now for sale, and on November 8, 2022, the BOS will vote to rescind the permit, as ordered by the court. The EIR requirement was triggered on one point: lack of adequate biological resource analysis.

Given that 82% of the structures on Soda Canyon Road burned in 2017, and there were  evacuation problems resulting in two deaths, it seems outrageous that fire danger is not also the reason for rescinding the use permit. But then, that is an ongoing story, one tied into Napa County’s overuse of “same practical effect” in the interpretation of the Board of Forestry’s Fire Safe Regulations.

For now, this project will not further degrade the environment. Soda Canyon Road leads to land being pillaged by those with dreams of wineries and vineyards, who exploit thin topsoil and astounding beauty for growing and marketing “great cabs.” Yes, this is also happening all over Napa County, especially in our most beautiful, remote, and vulnerable watersheds. But now, a precedent is set. An EIR will be required for any further wine production and tourism-oriented development on this land. This is hardly the first time that the county has been criticized for not requiring EIRs. Citizens, primarily Protect Rural Napa, worked hard for years, fought the county with their own resources, and risked a loss in court. If they had not done all that, Mountain Peak Winery would be marketing its permitted 100,000 gallons of wine a year to its 22,000 visitors, making 44,000 additional trips a year on a dead-end, winding road six miles up into the beautiful, formerly quiet eastern hills of Napa County.

Even when there are huge losses, like the 14,000 trees of Walt Ranch, and it feels that our governing bodies are not hearing us –when it seems the power of money eclipses the health of our watersheds and residents’ quality of life in our rural lands and cities, there are also wins. Mountain Peak Winery is a story to celebrate and remember. On days like November 8, we know we are making headway.

Filed under: Fruits of Eden: Field Notes Napa Valley, General, Mountain Peak Winery, Protect Rural Napa, Soda Canyon Road

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The Sentience of All Life

Twelve years ago next month, I published a blog about the death of our goat Sophia entitled “Goats and Grief.” There is seldom a day that that blog is not read, and usually at least two or three times. I have been curious why this blog, among the hundreds of others I have written over the last 12 years, has been the most popular. People love or hate goats. That may be part of it.  

But I suspect the title holds the key. Animals break open our hearts in ways that bring us to our knees. Through our love of our animal companions,  are we becoming more attuned to the sentience of the non-human world? The world is so alive, so mysterious! I think we long for this connection with the animating spirit of the world, whether that is in the body of a goat or an ancient oak. That awareness is especially important now as we face our treatment of the natural world in this time of great climatic change.

Here I reprint “Goats and Grief.” It begins and ends with two poems about beloved goat companions, both poems part of a series called “Meditation at First Light.” 

November 23
Ah, Sophia. 

She didn’t grow
her winter coat.
Nothing we could do.

Our veterinarian told us that goats grieve deeply after we lost four within a few months.

First, there was Natalie, 14 1/2 years, old by any goat standards, although I had high hopes that she would make 18. But we made a terrible mistake in allowing our vineyard manager to bring a couple og horned pygmies, or “devil goats” as we came to call them.

These “devils” had been attacked and mauled by dogs. We naively gave them a new home before the dogs returned to finish them off. Almost immediately, the two new goats set out to kill Natalie, certain, I suspect, that she was a threat to their food supply and herd rank (Natalie was the queen goat). We were appalled when they used their huge, foot-long horns to roll Natalie on her back, a dangerous position for a goat. We separated the devils from the herd, but their work had been done. Natalie, already arthritic and in decline, died within a couple of weeks of their arrival. My scientific sister suggested that goats have a different idea of compassion, killing off those they perceive as not viable. Nevertheless, I could not forgive them and found another home for them.

After Natalie’s death, Boris became morose. It was clear that he, too, at age 14, would be passing on very soon. His body was also lean and boney, as often happens with the aged. I let him eat plums outside the goat pen at his own leisure, and two days before his death, he and I leaned against the barn door and shared an ice cream bar, one of his favorite things. Then he fell asleep, head on my heart, snoring loudly for 20 minutes. It was his goodbye. Two and a half weeks after Natalie’s death, Boris was gone as well.

Within a month, Toyon was strangled in a freak accident. We were all in shock, but none of us was more upset than Sophia. Sophia was Toyon’s mother. She was also the first goat I midwifed into this world, helping Natalie ease her into the world a decade before. In a two-month period, Sophia lost not only her mother but her daughter as well. Slowly over the next months, Sophia declined, also becoming boney. No amount of medical help or homeopathy could restore her will to live. It was then Claudia, our vet, made her pronouncement: “Goats grieve deeply.”

Attributing certain feeling states like grief, jealousy, or joy to animals is often condemned as anthropomorphism, based on the fallacy that only humans have feelings. Most humans with animal companions know this is simply untrue. Furthermore, animals offer an opening into feeling: an animal’s shorter life span means we cycle through the elation of birth, the joy of companionship, and then the loss when we have to let them go, and we do this over and over if we have the good fortune of having a relationship with more than one animal. We are afforded the “opportunity” to grieve and stay open-hearted to the living. This is an important task, one that also can repair early attachment wounds.

But animals also offer a bridge into the non-human world. Goats form strong social relationships within the herd. They do not do well farmed “industrially,” thriving only if they have consistent caretakers they accept as part of the herd(1).

At night when I enter the barn, I find the goats sleeping in their family groups: These days, it is Gaviota with Dasher and Valley, Lily with Petunia and Boey, but in earlier days, I’d find Natalie with her newest kids, beside Sophia and Toyon. When Boris became jealous and hurt (yes, goats are very prone to hurt and jealousy!) when Natalie kidded, he tended to sleep with Racu, the llama, also a male. He became best friends with Anna, Sophia’s twin sister’s kid. When Anna’s mother died of a sudden digestive condition, I was away. When I returned two days later, Anna and her brother, then three years old, met me at the gate, both leaning their foreheads hard against my leg for comfort, something they seldom did. We all grieved together.

In becoming aware of these goat friendships and attachments, I have become more sensitive to the non-human world. Goats are sentient beings. My care for them is based on that fact.

One estimate says there are probably as many as 700 million goats in the world, most in the Middle East and Asia (2). While it is beyond me to imagine my own goats as meat, I know goats are an important source of sustenance for many of the world’s people. In Ireland, they were called “the poor man’s cow.” They can subsist on many terrains other animals cannot, and they take less room. They are also one of the earliest domesticated animals, although, left untended, they return to the wild quite easily, something untrue of most domestic animals.

What if, like the so-called primitive, we honored the animal we kill for meat, recognizing it as a sentient being with, yes, emotional and psychological needs? Animals open our hearts if we let them. What violence do we do to even our own souls in allowing animals to be taken from their mothers at birth and raised in feedlots with food not meant for their digestive systems? Our life depends on killing plants and animals for food. What does it mean that our killing is done by others, out of our sight, and almost always inhumane?

To hold that the animal we eat is a sentient being opens the issue that sentient beings, including humans, are a part of the food chain. Our physical bodies are meant to nourish the earth, including other animals. We are not “above” this.

I hold this knowledge each early morning I greet the goats as they wait impatiently to be fed. They have bestowed upon me the gift of membership to the herd, and I follow the rules. Always pet Agaleah, the current queen goat, first, then Gaviota, then Lily. When we walk, I pay attention. Agaleah and I share the lead, but it is also my job not to let the stragglers, always Lily and Star, fall behind. There are coyotes and mountain lions; the herd is safety.

This “goat walk” is one of my favorite times of the day. Goats are fun-loving. They leap onto steep banks, chasing each other through the forest edge. The pygmies slide down hills on their bellies. For me, they are also a natural anti-depressant.

When it is time for them to pass from this world, I, too, will grieve deeply, grateful for their lives and for mine. It is their parting gift.

 

June 23

For Boris

Poem on the Grave of an Old Goat

You have become wild

strawberries and poison oak,

delicacies

you always loved.

 

 

1 Pat Coleby, Natural Goat Care. (Austin, TX: Acres USA, 2001),116

2 https://www.extension.umn.edu/meatgoa...

 

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Dementia and Distillation

Shortly after Donald and I learned that our ranch was at risk of being seriously impacted by a development next door, Donald was diagnosed with mild cognitive decline. Within two years, this diagnosis changed to Alzheimer’s Disease and vascular dementia. This was an unknown path neither of us had anticipated. Grief is a theme that runs through Fruits of Eden: Field Notes Napa Valley 1991-2021 , whether that be grief for the loss of a beloved spouse or oak savanna, or the familiar climate we have always known. The following is an excerpt:

Dementia is a long slow death, one that allows everyone plenty of room for denial. At first you explain the little forgetfulnesses away. As we age, many of us forget a name, or can’t retrieve a word immediately, or occasionally forget what we were going to do when we walk from one room to another. We reassure each other: we all do this. But sometimes the little things happen more often and become bigger; agreements made, forgotten; and any attempt to remind the other, met with anger and distrust. Slowly you realize that you can no longer talk through disagreements. You have to avoid them. Gaps in memory are bridged by stories you do not recognize, stories that make the world make sense again—to your spouse. Bits and pieces of memory are collected and glued together, like the song of the mockingbird. Everything is there, only in new order. Assumptions become reduced to what they really are: assumptions. Everything is up for grabs.

Donald regularly searches for the cause of his cognitive impairment, which was finally diagnosed in the fall of 2016 as Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia. None of his relatives were known to have Alzheimer’s. He has had a sleep disorder most of his adult life, awakening in the early hours each night; lack of good sleep can cause dementia. Did that arc of our bedroom’s vaulted ceiling that he generated in the wee hours twenty-five years ago take its toll on his brain? What about his fall in 2006 from the flatbed truck? Our neighbor Dave called that morning, telling me Donald had fallen 4 feet onto his head while they were loading fruit bins. I rushed to the site. Copious amounts of blood gushed through the once-blue bandana Donald was holding to the top of his head. He wouldn’t let me call an ambulance, so I drove him the fifteen minutes to the local emergency room. As I drove up, several nurses and emergency room technicians who had been leaning against the hospital entrance smoking, rushed to our car, one having grabbed a neck brace, which they immediately strapped Donald into. As they struggled to get Donald’s tall body, stiff from the neck brace, out of our Subaru Forester, they scolded me for not calling an ambulance. “He didn’t want me to,” I told them. “You let someone with a head injury make that decision?” they countered.

He is used to being in charge. He planned and built a number of the parks in the East Bay Regional Park system, including Point Isabelle and Point Pinole, and designed emergency rooms, maternity wards, and updated special equipment rooms in several Bay Area hospitals. He knows how to get things done. I am used to deferring to this quality, as it certainly isn’t my skill. In building our home, I brainstormed with him, but he did the work. He mapped out our driveway when I said I wanted to build our home on the mountain, not on Dry Creek Road, as he originally planned. He followed the old wagon trail three-quarters of a mile up the mountain before turning into a forested area and blazing the last 500 feet to the house site with a machete, hacking through thick stands of poison oak and invasive Himalayan blackberries without cutting one tree. Donald not only had vision but also the ability to bring vision into form. He suffered no fools in the process, although he would deny this about himself.

A friend commented that Donald doesn’t have the personality for dementia, but who among us does? After being rightfully scolded that day in the emergency room, I consoled myself with the fact that I had refused to take him to St. Helena Hospital forty minutes north, an emergency room he designed and insisted I take him to. But this was all only a hint of things to come: having to make decisions he disagreed with, for his own good. For our own good. In dementia, not only memory goes, but also judgement as well.

It took many layers of stitches to repair the skin on Donald’s head, but nothing could repair what was happening in his brain. Statistics say if we live to be seniors, a third of us will die with some kind of dementia.[i] Dementia affects everyone; a pebble cast into a pond sends ripples to the shores. I seek the bedrock that holds firm through the earthquake of Donald’s brain, which no longer perceives and processes information in ways it always had.

But once you accept the neurological changes, you are on new ground, and it gets easier. It’s another kind of distillation. To survive with any semblance of sanity, you must distill away the impurities of assumptions and habits you have always had with each other and learn to live more often in the eternal Present. Old routines are boiled off, new ones developed, and then boiled off again as the disease progresses: Donald’s driving himself to his downtown office to manage our commercial property, which he had done since 2000 when he retired from his architectural office; my own private practice as an analytical psychotherapist—all of this has to be reevaluated on a regular basis. Is he still capable of making decisions about a lease with a tenant? Can he manage the bank accounts? Should he be driving at all if he gets lost in downtown Napa and falls asleep at stop signs? And concurrent with that: how much can I actually do if I have to take over the many tasks he used to do?

Chemist and philosopher Primo Levi wrote, “Distillation is a slow, philosophic, and silent occupation which keeps you busy but gives you time to think of other things. … When you set about distilling, you acquire the consciousness of repeating a ritual consecrated by the centuries, almost a religious act, in which from the imperfect material you obtain the essence, the usia, the spirit … purity is attained, an ambiguous and fascinating condition …”[ii]

When we first consulted Ray Dolby Brain Health Center in San Francisco in 2013, I was told that our marriage, as we had known it, was over. I rejected this, wanting to believe that Donald would get better. More sleep, change of diet, exercise—all of these might cure his forgetfulness and his increasing mood changes. But he got worse, not better, and the diagnosis changed from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease. As things stand now, there is no cure for Alzheimer’s. There may be in the future, but it will probably be too late for Donald. I am told not to count on it. We are left with the question, what essence, what spirit, what dark gift of dementia, do we distill in the vessel of our marriage?

[i] Alzheimer’s Association, 2017 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures, http://www.alz.org/facts/.

[ii] Primo Levi, The Periodic Table, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), 57, 58.

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Napa Bookmine: Joint Event

I am happy to announce that I will be doing a joint Napa Bookmine Zoom event with Louise Dunlap on Thursday, September 29. Both of our books have been released this month. We share common ground.

I first read a draft of Louise Dunlap’s Inherited Silence: Listening to the Land, Healing the Colonizer Mind as I returned from the Midwest on the California Zephyr. The train crawled most of the way from Galesburg, Illinois, to Martinez, California, its tracks under repair, which gave me plenty of time to witness often troubled landscapes once tended by peoples who lived in more of a balance with the natural world. Moving through high desert now devoid of its keystone native buffalo and passing freight trains the length of several football fields, cars loaded with coal, I was particularly impacted by Louise’s writing.

Yes, we all know the story of how our country was “discovered,” as if white men were the first humans to arrive on the continent. We know about Indian Wars. I was of a generation who watched cowboy and Indian movies and TV shows and then wanted to play our cowboy and Indian games.

But over the last decades, we are slowly acknowledging the truth. That is part of Louise’s book: the reality of what we did to get the land. We need to hear the details because it humanizes the people we displaced. All of us are complicit. We live on taken land. And it impacts everything from how we treat each other to how we, and our land-use policies, mistreat the land.

My book, Fruits of Eden: Field Notes Napa Valley 1991-2021, chronicles Napa County land-use issues impregnated with colonization attitudes which too often do not prioritize the health of the whole environment and its inhabitants. Our books overlap in their love of Earth and its communities. Both books are a prayer, of sorts, for sanity to return, for us to consider the impact of our actions on others, and the integrity of the whole. Both advocate for a change of consciousness if we are to survive the crisis of climate disruption.

Please join us at Napa Bookmine via Zoom on September 29 at 7 pm. We look forward to seeing you and taking your questions. 

With warmest wishes,

Patricia
www.patriciadamery.com

Please note that this event is free. But your RSVP and registration here is needed in advance.

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Fruits of Eden: Preparations for the Release!

My book Fruits of Eden: Field Notes Napa Valley 1991-2021 is about to be released, so I contracted with Janna Waldinger of Art & Clarity to take some photos. This is one of my favorites. Each day some of my dear animals walk with me. (Here, Petunia, the goat, and HIjo, the llama.)  For almost 30 years now, I have walked the trails of our ranch, getting to know all that live here: the valley oaks and coastal live oaks, the madrone and bay, the coyotes, bobcats, and yes, the mountain lions too. Often we will hear the thrashing of deer uphill in the brush or the short sharp warnings of a quail daddy protecting his brood feeding nearby. Walking with animals is a kind of meditation, alerting you to what else is present. 

My husband Donald and I farmed our grapes and aromatics organically and biodynamically, practices that also induct you into a receptive state. You come to know the seasons, what is right and what is out of balance, and you are rewarded with a daily baptism in beauty. 

But back to the book: When I learned that the ancient oak savanna next door was on the chopping block for yet another “great cab,” and when I learned this was happening all over our valley and county, threatening the health of our watersheds, forests, and climate,  I knew that I could not be silent and joined others in working for the health of our county. This is what Fruits of Eden is about: our responsibility to the land and to each other. We are in a culture characterized by a colonial attitude: the land is there for humans to use, regardless of who and what is hurt. This has made a real mess, and it’s going to take work and a lot of love to figure it out.

There are other ways– ways practiced for millennia before white man arrived.  Potawatomi author and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer says that gratitude and reciprocity bring us into a healing relationship with Earth. Listening to her narrated Braiding Sweet Grass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, I reach a heightened receptive state on that sliding scale of awareness. Everything is alive and far more a part of me than I ever knew. In fact, we share 18% of our DNA with plants—those oaks and madrones I have come to know over these many years. Walking our ranch each morning, my gratitude swells to those beings who snatch carbon dioxide out of the air and, in the presence of sunlight, store carbon in their materiality while releasing oxygen for me—and us—to breathe. Each breath I take is communion with these trees. When everything is recognized as alive and interdependent, our responsibility changes.

I won’t say more here, except I would love for you to read my story. We don’t have much time to turn things around on Earth, but let’s begin. 

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