Discovering a New River

San Jose Creek has never run for many decades.

One thing I never thought I'd experience is finding a new river! I have frequented Carmel, California, a kind of ancestral home, all my life. But visiting this week I discovered, unbelievably, a new river that at least for the past 60 years wasn't there before! There had always been a dry creek bed but no running water. When I asked a local watershed expert about this new watercourse, she hadn't heard of it either! Yesterday the two of us went there to gaze at its volume in wonder. Then, having secured special permission, we both hiked into its source. That I even got to see a wild place so close to our homestead for the first time is incredible enough, even without the new river! Within two miles up the beautiful moss-carpeted trail past lupin bushes, pine groves and quite hidden redwoods, the trail vanished into the water and as underbrush was too thick to bushwhack we could go no further. But what a thrill!

The San Jose Creek empties at Monastery Beach, just two miles south of our family house, on one of the most popular stretches of the entire west coastline. It's not like I alone discovered this, Columbus-like, I'm sure that some scientists and officials know all about the creek and its vagaries, but if the watershed expert was stumped, that tells me it's news. Furthermore, it's not just a creek, but all the days I watched it was too big to wade across at its shallowest where it empties on the beach!

We are blessed to live at a time where we've finally outgrown much of the blind consumptive approach to nature that humanity has cultivated (and still rules the chambers of power, I'm afraid!) So my hope is that there is enough public support to preserve this treasure and its waters in the midst of a state with a thirst crisis. Currently steelhead trout, a sensitive species, are being reintroduced to this and nearby waters, which I hope the government is monitoring for preservation. Hopefully we slow humans have finally realized that we depend on a healthy world if we are to survive. Now the question is will we?