Lupine wildflowers at sunset on hills along the Big Sur Coast, California by enlightphoto
Nature doesn’t have a chance, growled my friend the other day. His feelings were understandable — he had grown up in California… and a very different kind of California it was then than the one we know today.
My friend came of age before the War, a time when the Golden State held a near-mythic status in the imaginations of other Americans not fortunate enough to (yet) live there: it seemed to many to be a kind of magical near-paradise where sweet smelling orange groves and vinyards dappled every valley, a wild and beautiful coast framed its whole western edge, mysterious forests of huge redwoods grew in the interior… a benign, almost-separate nation: as big as Japan, yet with vastly fewer people. A gentle land whose every breeze seemed to waft some new sweetness to the senses… a land largely free of huge shopping malls, land-devouring freeways… and angry prisons.
“Golden California, ” — that’s how myself and my law school classmates at Michigan Law School described it in the early 60s. Everyone we knew — including us — wanted to move there: why not live out one’s days where the air is always sweet, the landscapes forever dramatic and beautiful, the sun shines nearly all the time? It is quite different now, I silently agreed with my friend.
The state has become a place transformed — and all in the space of just one generation. Now, much of it has been overwhelmed by a tide of newcomers since the War; the fruit trees gone, their orchards now growing new crops of subdivisions, set in between the shopping malls and office parks. Many of those rolling grassy hills and stunning seascapes are now scarred by spaghetti -like sprawls of freeway, polluting the air and the former quiet. I guess a lot of other folks wanted to move there too
Above the Harbor Freeway (I-110), Los Angeles County, California by cocoi_m
So it is a different California now; that older one has mostly just — vanished, never to return. But — again I mused to myself — is it all gone, really really gone… all those magnificent landscapes , those flourishing habitats for so many rare species? All that “Nature” mourned by my friend… is it really gone, beyond recovery?
“No,” my brain shouted at me — no! “Don’t you remember? You were there when the onslaught began, you and the many other thousands who loved the gentle way it was. We resolved to fight back — remember? ” And so we did: we did push back, challenging the worst of the destructive overdevelopment at every turn. Cry California was the name of our most-read publication; The Joni Mitchell song “They Paved Paradise and Put it into a Parking Lot,” our rallying cry. At many points and on so many occasions it seemed to be a near-hopeless struggle with developers and extractive industries for just about every acre, and every tree of this most beautiful state.
But it was not in vain. During all those intense and passionate years of ups and downs, joys and despairs… two decades of stormy hearings, legislation and lawsuits, we rescued much of that former California. We reached out for, and got, huge public support.The tactics and techniques we used were so successful that they continue to be applied to this day.
How could this be? The pushback began as we came to understand that our Old California had a major flaw: no serious environmental protections, not even a framework in place. You see, as special as it was to live in that Old California, there were no guarantees that it would remain that way. A few very fine parks, yes; but no environmental laws. Timber companies owned 97% of the redwoods, the coast was wide open to developers, and almost nowhere existed even the most rudimentary controls on rampant overdevelopment.
But it was the passion of those struggles of the 60s and 70s that changed all that. A lot of that beautiful nature lamented by my friend was lost in those years. But much was rescued too. Now protected by law; safer now than it ever had been in that former time. Safe forever. Out of those years of struggle there emerged a whole new structure — a powerful framework of some of the strongest conservation laws in the nation. Most important, the struggle created — and made much stronger — a revitalized environmental movement, whose values are now everywhere embedded in almost every new policy of this new California.
Just to name a few examples of what was saved: a coastal protection act, guaranteeing access — and in many places, public ownership for all the people, not just the wealthy. Strong — and enforceable — wetlands and endangered species laws, far tougher controls on development. Now there are also millions more acres of the best federal and state forests, seacoast, rivers, and special open spaces, protected by law. There is even a Redwoods National Park and a California Desert Protection Act.
How could all this happen, given the wealth and political clout of developers?
Answer: the same way as it has always been. By small bands of determined individuals who personally knew and loved the places, or the values, about to destroyed. The enormous public support came a bit later. First it was necessary to speak out, to challenge and take action — to show the way. The vast majority were volunteers. All they really had was their courage, their determination to never back down. Ordinary folks like the rest of us. They are the ones who did it.
Is it enough? I think not; there are still millions more acres, habitats, miles of wild rivers to be protected. And millions more acres to be restored back to ecological health, as they are doing in the heavily logged redwood forests. But enough or not, it is a joyful and happy thing to remember.
Redwood forest by Petit Léo
So I think the Old California is still there, and I savor it. Still wild forests and pristine beaches, grassy hills, those sweet smells of wild nature. And each time I drive up along the San Mateo Coast or Big Sur; each time I wander through a redwood park or in the pine forests inside a new Wilderness Area; each time I see the vast open parklands of the East Bay, or float another wild river still dancing in the sun, I whisper a silent prayer: of thanks to all those who made it so.
