Current Events

How development pressure and environmental law may force radical change along the seemingly idyllic but deeply troubled Russian River

Comments (0) By Matt Smith Wednesday, Aug 2 2000

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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.

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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!"