Current Events

Joan Vilms and I get back into the kayaks and continue down the river.

An osprey dances on the breeze overhead, then disappears into a twiggy nest atop an old dead pine.

Paul Trapani

The Sonoma County Water Agency's rubber dam is inflated every year so pumps can move water to Santa Rosa and beyond.

Related Content

• Letters to the Editor
  August 9, 2000

More About

• Joan Vilms
• Sonoma County Water Agency
• Sonoma
• Outdoor Recreation
• Canoeing and Kayaking

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Weekly Newsletter: Our weekly feature stories, movie reviews, calendar picks and more - minus the newsprint and sent directly to your inbox.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

I lose myself in the rhythm of my paddle, the sensation of a fresh breeze that's now coming off the water. I look several summers into the future and imagine the sand of a dry Russian River riverbed. I cast my mind toward the rubber dam, and imagine an empty riverbank berm. Thanks to the Endangered Species Act and a tiny microbe, my fantasy imagines, the dam is gone. I imagine hydroelectric dams demolished all over the California Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and the Siskiyous, because saving species requires this. I imagine housing tracts turning into apartment buildings, automobiles becoming trolley cars, and suburban Sonoma County strip malls transforming into urban corner stores. I imagine Joan Vilms getting rid of her minivan and kayaks, because there's simply not enough space for people to live a frontier lifestyle if wilderness is to survive.

Suddenly I'm snapped from my fantasy by an unseen swift current and pulled toward a clump of low-hanging trees along the river's edge. I duck, but become tangled among the branches just the same. To my clumsiness, Joan Vilms offers this hollered advice, which the rest of California might also heed: "Watch out!"