We all have special places we have fished and that we hold dear for any number of reasons. Beauty, fishing success, and companions come to mind. Or simply how right the spot was at a certain time. We might not revisit them, but we may depend on their continuing existence to provide some flavor to our present lives. October’s devastating North Bay fires poignantly reminded me of this.
About the time the fires broke out, I had been reading the poet Kenneth Rexroth. He had a getaway cabin in Marin County at the base of a waterfall where he did much of his creative work. Though he was not exclusively a nature poet, evocative imagery of landscape, water, waterfalls, and often the Sierra Nevada figure in many of his writings. For example, a fine piece, “Time Spirals,” meditates on a coho salmon run near his cabin, and “The Wheel Revolves” conveys the eternal cycle of Sierra seasons.
This winter, ash-and-silt-laden runoff from burned areas will likely cause severe impacts to the Russian and Napa River systems and smaller Sonoma Creek. While these waters have other important values, they also hold worthy steelhead and salmon runs that have been the focus of earnest protection and restoration efforts over the years. There is much to lament if any harm comes to these fish and their habitat.
With Rexroth’s imagery and the fires in mind, I remembered my own encounters during past fishing seasons with remote Sonoma Creek headwaters in the Mayacamas Mountains. To my dismay, I learned that the Nuns Fire burned in Adobe Canyon and Sugar Loaf Ridge State Park, right through the setting for my memories.
Over twenty years ago, I had developed the habit of fishing soon after the trout opener on a short reach of water just inside the park. The rest of Sonoma Creek down to tidewater had been closed to protect steelhead, while this stretch was inexplicably open — now it is wisely closed, as well. And a thing of beauty it was — a freestone charmer deep in an inner Coast Range canyon, ambling through serpentine boulders under a riparian canopy of sycamores, oaks, and occasional redwoods. And it held obliging resident rainbows. I never saw anyone or any sign that anyone else had fished it, maybe because it was small and overlooked. The reach ended at Sonoma Creek Falls, impassable to fish. One time I scouted above the falls into a steep and heavily shaded stretch of jumbled, mossy, serpentine blocks framing cascades and protecting small plunge pools. It was a place of intimate and breathtaking beauty. And unexpectedly, I caught several small rainbows, the likely remnants of long-ago plantings higher up the stream. We have all experienced perfect fishing moments like this.
So it all came together. This remembered, almost paradisaical hidden water and my delight at having discovered and fished it. Then Rexroth inspired associations to poetic images of water landscapes. And lastly their combination along with a keenly felt sense of potential for injury to an exceptional place caused by the nearby fire.
Although my memories remain, I feel profound sadness at the possible loss of such beauty.
