As we live through interesting times, I obsess on the news and vacillate between despair and hope. Despair is the easy part. We swim in a sea of terrible stories about Trump playing Godzilla destroying our government, our country and the world. Like the movie Godzilla, we are now living through the sequel that is even worse and more destructive than the original. But even Godzilla met a bad ending, and we can only hope that Trump will do the same. Recent milestones included Trump’s “Liberation” Day in which he attempted to destroy the world’s economy with his bizarre tariffs. We also marked his First 100 Days after which Trump’s poll numbers and the US economic system are now in free fall. But while we are in the middle of Trump’s American carnage, it is easy to give in to despair and give up on hope. I really believe that we are better than this.
Another recent milestone was Earth Day which seemed to barely register in the news because of all the Trumpian noise. To celebrate Earth Day and hang on to hope, Ellen and I decided to visit one of the most important environmental success stories of our time, the Klamath River. The river flows between Oregon and Northern California, eventually emptying into the Pacific near Crescent City, CA.
In the Fall of 2024, four dams on the Klamath were finally taken down, after almost 20 years of a fierce water war between the farmers upstream, the Native People downstream, conservation groups, local representatives and the utility company operating the dams. It restored nearly 400 miles of vital habitat for salmon and other species that are essential to the river’s ecosystem and the communities that depend on them. This let salmon migrate upstream for the first time in over 100 years and established new guidelines to achieve a compromise between agricultural needs and Native Tribes. This effort was the largest dam removal and river restoration project ever in the US. In October 2024, the first fall-run Chinook salmon was seen in the Upper Klamath Basin all the way upstream in Oregon.
We visited two of the former dam sites and were amazed by the change. Over 18 years ago I had photographed the entire length of the Klamath for the environmental group International Rivers. We witnessed the damage caused by the dams upstream. We also interviewed and photographed the Native People downstream that were struggling with the loss of the salmon that their people had depended on well into their distant past.
The fact that such a large and diverse group of people could finally come together over restoring the Klamath after so many years should be seen as something to celebrate. The restoration of the river not only affects the river and the people who live near it. It also affects a vast number of forests and marshlands such as the Klamath Marsh National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge in California which we visited. Even though Trump is trying to cut the money that is already allocated for restoration, much of the restoration work is locally funded and will continue despite the weirdo in the White House.
We left the Klamath River Watershed and eventually made our way over the snow-covered Warner Mountains into Cedarville, CA. This is an incredibly beautiful area with the mountains on one side and the vast Great Basin on the other. Located in the seldom visited northeastern corner of California, it feels unique, wonderfully isolated and separate from the rest of the state. When I wandered around the saloon where we had dinner, I noticed an enormous Trump flag with his image and the words “Fight, fight, fight”. I knew I wasn’t in San Francisco anymore and hoped the people who put up the flag don’t get run over by Trump’s madness in the next four years.
The next day we were fortunate to be able to drive through northwestern Nevada on one of the most remote roads in the country. After hours of endless sage brush and Basin and Range country we landed in Gerlach, NV. It’s claim to fame is that once a year it is home to the nearby Burning Man bacchanal in the Black Rock Desert. I am sure the locals love the money that comes with the revelers but probably wonder about their sanity.
After brief meeting in Reno, ended the day at our favorite place to stay, Camp Richardson’s in South Lake Tahoe, CA. We have been regularly coming here for over 30 years and think of it as a special place to just chill out. When we are here, we mostly hike, drink coffee, sleep and then get up and do it again the next day.
On the second and third days here, it snowed! It was just a little but enough to make it magical (and cold). Hiking in the thin crust of snow wasn’t hard and the chilled air was really invigorating, especially in the High Sierra. We hiked many of our favorite trails to many of the unique places in the Tahoe Basin. Being here is like a giant reset and we savored the solace of nature and the vast open space of Lake Tahoe.
Fortunately, our last day of driving back to San Francisco was glorious! As always, we were sad to leave. But we really needed a chance take a deep rest before plunging back into resisting the attempted take-over of our government by a looney lunatic. When we got home, it was interesting to watch a re-run of the classic Western called High Noon with Gary Cooper. It was made in the early 1950s during the time of the Red Scare and Senator Joseph McCarthy. The Hollywood Blacklist affected this movie as the screenwriter had to escape to England. Cooper’s character became iconic as a symbol of an honest Marshall standing up to the outlaw banditos that wanted to kill him and take over the town. The movie image of Cooper became a part of the famous Solidarity campaign in 1989 when they sought to overthrow the Russian Soviet government that had come to repress Poland after WWII.
Perhaps we need to revise this image for our own time as we are learning how to stand in solidarity against a new dictatorship in the White House.
Library Road Trip 