A Glass Doorknob

One day in January of this year a box arrived at the post office from Dave and Wanda Benson. The box contained a cut glass doorknob, a wayward relic of their former home, the old Benson ranch house. Gazing into the sunlit facets of the humble yet dazzling gift, it was easy to imagine a time, eighty-seven years ago, when the doorknob was part of the then newly-built bungalow, which we now inhabit. I imagined the Bensons coming upon it among their unpacked goods in Idaho with the realization that the right place for it was back on the old ranch.

My eye, gazing into the clear glass eye of the doorknob, looks inward and back in time.

The record of settlement by the Anglo-Americans, only 160 years old, is written in the orchards, roads, structures and modified creek beds. But it is the old land itself, the primordial lake, the ancient oaks, and the extinct volcano that summon thoughts of the Indians.

In the peripheral sight of the mind's eye, trace elements of the Pomo Indians are just discernable in Big Valley. The hints show up in the spawning runs of hitch, in the acorn mast of the valley oaks. The wide open eye sees disintegrating trailer homes on the rancheria. There is a casino. There are new Indian tract houses and a recreation center. Several miles north, a marker denotes the "Bloody Island" massacre not far from another casino. There are Pomo names on the landscape, Konocti for one.

Family names of Anglo-American pioneers are printed on metal road signs, cast in bronze plaques, and printed on U.S. Geologic Survey maps. Sitting on a bicycle, I looked up at the green road sign with white letters spelling Benson Road against the distant backdrop of the high undulation of chaparral-covered Benson Ridge. The name of Benson is found too in the Pioneer Cemetery among periwinkle, poison oak, and blue-eyed grass.











Kelseys are also seen in the pioneer cemetery. The creek and the very town are named for them. The big white K branded onto the face of the mountain denotes not Konocti, but Kelseyville. The obsidian-studded monument to Andy Kelsey stands above his remains, and also marks the site of his adobe house, the first house erected in the region. Among the obsidian chunks, locally called bottle rock, is one piece at top and center of the monument, fashioned into the shape of an oversized arrowhead. It's as if the arrow of retribution is still falling toward the earth where Kelsey lies. His wife, Nancy, was the first Anglo-American female to cross the North American continent into California for good or ill. The Pomo, enslaved by Kelsey to build his house, killed their master in the Fall of 1849, and were, in turn, killed with their women and children by the U.S. Cavalry at their village near the upper end of the lake.







The shoreline of Clear Lake is heavily built up in many areas, but, from a boat, it is apparent the Lake remains a vital refuge for grebes, pelicans, ducks, gulls, ospreys, cormorants, herons, eagles, turtles, otters, and fish large and small.



The flocks of white pelicans, 3,000 strong, seen last fall are down to a small fraction of that size as most have dispersed to breeding lakes in the inter-mountain West.





I got some freshly laid eggs at Shady Rock Ranch, where the poultry seem well contented with their domestic arrangements.
Brewer's blackbirds frequent the peafowl pen for grain. When frightened, they cling to the chickenwire awaiting their chance to settle down to their pilfering ways with no intention of flying away until they are sated.







This week, the valley oaks' tiny chains of green flowers are in full force.

Pear Blossom Time

By April 11 in the orchard, blossoms had begun giving way to leaves. Frosty nights still lay ahead, but days were warm.



Two types of hummingbird, Rufous and Anna's, along with bumble bees and honey bees, hurried among the coral-red quince blooms as if knowing the feast would be short-lived. The five-year-old tree peonies flowered for the first time.





In counterpoint to the burst of renewed life, a solitary rooster, following the tradition of old Cape Buffalo bulls and elderly Hindu men, graduated from being a householder to wandering the world as a sadhu. He rested for hours at a time on a bed of dry oak leaves among oak saplings or basked in the reflected heat coming off the corrogated metal bunkhouse. He picked at some spilled seed beneath a bird feeder in a disinterested way as if half remembering a former appetite. He was
not yet past the need to occasionally check in with his old rivals on the neighboring ranch. But he wouldn't bother anymore to
visit them. Staying put, he let loose a series of hoarse cock-a-doodle-dos, loud, but not so powerful as they had been in previous seasons. He seemed gratifed that he still elicited a faintly heard response from roosters in the distance. His increasing detatchment had a kind of dignity of foreknowledge.



Bluebirds managed to establish a nest in one of the boxes in spite of fierce competition from tree swallows, which colonized several boxes. Bluebirds construct tidy nests of straw, while tree swallows utilize poultry feathers in abundance. While bluebirds keep their nests clean, swallows soon foul theirs with guano. On the ranch, the swooping, twittering swallows are one of the most anticipated sights of Spring.







The columns of perforations left by the pair of red-bellied sapsuckers last Fall does not seem to have compromised the vigor of the young valley oak. The trunk was almost girdled by the birds, but leafout is happening, albeit later than that of most of the other oaks. But this particular tree has always been late to green up.



Rainy Aprils in past years have brought as many as thirty common mergansers to our section of the creek. This season I saw six. A pair is staying close to the woodduck box.



Since I ended the epoch of field tilling, the harrow has been languishing in meadow grasses.

Spawning of the Hitch

In this dry year the gates of the retention structure on Kelsey Creek were closed earlier than usual. The gates captured the flow from February rains as water backed up into the upstream riparian zone and helped recharge the local water table. But with the coming of the hitch migration in early March, the gates were opened allowing for the passage of thousands of the fish. It was easy to see them paired off or in gangs thrashing in the riffles. Many had passed through the gates headed upcurrent for points south. Continuous numbers were visible as they moved up from the lake and beneath the Soda Bay Road bridge. Some schools leisurely swam downstream, their spawning presumably completed.

A neighbor, remembering the heavy rains of an El Nino year in the 1980s, told me of the night when the flooded pear orchards were alive with splashing hitch under the light of a full moon. When the flood waters dropped, vast numbers were stranded, just as had been documented in old photographs a hundred years earlier.



The herring spawning runs that occur every Spring in New England are a local cultural touchstone, a promise of the coming end of harsh weather, and a tourist attraction. Called herring in some watersheds, such as on Cape Cod, "buckies" in others, particularly in Rhode Island, the species arriving in the brooks from the Atlantic is actually the alewife.

The hitch strongly resemble the menhaden or herring. Silvery, scaly and bony, they are an impressive ten-inch minnow found only in the tributaries of San Francisco Bay, Monterey Bay, and Clear Lake. Predators attend the spawning including ospreys, black-crowned night herons, great blue herons, and raccoons.







The creek as an artery of life coursing through Big Valley's monocultures of pears, grapes and walnuts, often offers surprises.
Beyond the hitch spectacle, there was a Western pond turtle, which somehow made a living in the creek, which is dry for half the year. There were also deer tracks, a rarity so far from the wooded hills surrounding the valley. Turkey feathers, too, were unexpected, until I remembered it was the first day of the Spring turkey hunt. Maybe the birds, like the deer, were seeking refuge far from where the hunters stalked. A camouflaged turkey hunter I spoke with earlier in the day at the Cache Creek wildlife area lamented the elusiveness of his quarry. I pitilessly told him about the flock of three hundred I had seen on private land.







After watching the massing hitch at the Soda Bay Road bridge I turned to look at Mount Konocti above the vinyards.



Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a peach tree bloomed.

Winter Into Spring

By March 7 the pruning of the pear orchard was about complete, the ospreys were back on their nest atop the old tower and the tree swallows had returned from points South.



The winter was mild and relatively dry with little of the carnage of other winters. A dead pit bull was an exception, attracting five vultures near the Renfrew Crossing.



Depending on the timing of the rains, the vagaries of temperature and other mysterious factors, the whole character of our
surrounding fields changes from Spring to Spring. One year is dominated by miner's lettuce, while vetch or grasses may hold sway in other years. This time mustard did well under the native black walnuts at Shady Rock Ranch.



In the bunkhouse I found a couple of old ranch manuals, which reminded me of the constant effort of imagination it takes to wring a living from the land.







Remnant groves of Valley Oaks (quercus lobata) have miraculously survived into the present century in Big Valley. They call to mind the idyllic 19th Century paintings of Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt. A grove along Gaddy Lane thrives on the margins of a vernal pool. The pool was not in evidence on March 7 this year, but in other years it can persist well into April.



The manzanitas I planted at the ranch were in full bloom in early March, as were the heirloom daffodils.







Barn owlets have hatched by this time of year. The species seems common in Big Valley. Various ranch and vinyard owners have erected owl nesting boxes, which supplement the old buildings traditionally favored as nest sites.