Drought’s hard lesson: ‘When water is life’

The lake where Robert and Sarah Godfrey were fishing wasn’t one of the pretty ones.

All around this part of the Sierra near Tamarack, famous for its snow — when it does snow — there were full lakes surrounded by pines. But they’d come to Spicer Meadow Reservoir. Here, even before an epic drought made the shoreline look lunar, the wind howled most afternoons and the trees were sparse and twisted.

It meant something to Robert, a third-generation farmer, to fish in the waters that would, as long as there was some reservoir left, reach his pump in the Stanislaus River 100 miles away and irrigate his corn, carrots and tomatoes.

The thunderstorm that rolled in that afternoon wasn’t entirely unexpected — they happen many afternoons in the Sierra in the summer.

But the sunset.

It was 360 degrees. The storm clouds ringing the lake were prisms and mirrors, splitting light into lavenders and roses and tangerines and tossing it around full circle. Then, flashes of lightning. And, finally, a cold sprinkle of rain on exposed granite banks.

“There’s a drought,” Robert said. “But it’s beautiful regardless.”

‘Pouring the rest in a dog bowl’

The High Sierra was one of our last stops on a three-week road trip across California during drought. Photographer Robert Gauthier and I were out to see what the land looked like and how the changes affected people just going about their daily lives.

Our biggest surprise was how often drought came up without us mentioning it.

It was everywhere: in the fire clouds in the sky, in the chit-chat in line at the grocery store. If kids didn’t finish a glass of water, they poured the rest in a dog bowl. In a little delta town, people had pitched in to buy drought-resistant planters for Main Street.

We mostly followed waterways, sticking to back roads and little towns. We took my dog Murphy. He doggy-paddled dwindling waters, yelping with delight.

Yes, I have read “Travels with Charley.”

John Steinbeck’s companion on his trip was an elderly Paris-born poodle of the color bleu. Murphy is a 4-year-old Labrador retriever.

“Why he’s just a dog-dog,” Jim McCullough, an 82-year-old cattle rancher, said approvingly in Panoche, population 30, halfway between the Central Valley and the coast.

Steinbeck wrote, “A dog, particularly an exotic like Charley, is a bond between strangers.”

But even a not-particularly exotic dog is a bond. Everywhere we went, people reached out to pet Murphy and to tell us their stories.

That’s how we met Marci Ward, an exuberant woman in a pretty yellow dress who told us she was dying.

‘No strangers, just friends she hadn’t met’

We were up in Lake County, in the old downtown area of Upper Lake, when Marci asked if it was all right to pet my dog. She fell to her knees and gave Murphy the most thorough ear-scratching of his life.

She lived in a nearby town called Nice. Which I thought was appropriate.

She asked what brought us to town. Rob explained about our drought road trip.

“Drought,” she said softly. “When water is life.”

Marci, 60, told us she had a condition she felt she wouldn’t survive called Sjogren’s syndrome. It was sucking the moisture from her cells. Her skin was thin and stretched. Her eyes had no tears.

She said she’d thrown herself into caring for 10 acres that she and her roommate Bobby Boyd had planted with trees and flowers and vegetables that survived on little water.

We exchanged cards and warm goodbyes. I didn’t expect to see her again. But she stayed on my mind: She was drying out.

The next day we were trying to make some miles when we happened to pass the sign for Nice.

“What would you think about stopping to see Marci?” Rob asked.

I gave her a call. She said we had to come over: There were no strangers, she said, just friends she hadn’t met.

There was a sign on the gate announcing that the yard was a certified natural wildlife habitat offering food, shelter and water.

The ground was bare. But a crape myrtle was blooming dusty red. There were showy, pink Naked Ladies and shade from a redwood, a tall Italian cypress and a fragrant mimosa tree. A swath of Scottish broom covered a hill.

“It’s invasive, but it blooms the most gorgeous yellow,” Marci said.

A bed of feathery asparagus had provided side dishes all spring. A pair of titmice were hopping about fussily chica-de-deeing, and everywhere there were hummingbirds and hummingbird feeders. Marci made the sugar-water from what she caught in a bucket in the shower.

Her breath was shallow. She excused herself to take an oxygen treatment. We tried to take our leave, but she insisted we come inside.

“This is nothing. I do it every afternoon,” she said.

She regained her breath, came out to her living room, lay her head on Murphy and regaled us with funny stories of growing up in Bakersfield.

We tried to say goodbye from inside the house where it was cool. But she followed us outside into the searing heat in her bare feet.

“Have a great trip,” she said. “Remember life is a joyous thing, no matter what’s wrong.”

‘Worried about the trees he’d tried to protect’

We drove past flat, parched fields, white against blue skies, climbed through bark-beetle-chewed forests, navigated the bridges and ferries and sloughs and islands of California’s delta.

We discovered pockets that even two native Californians with lifelong wanderlust didn’t know existed.

I struck up conversations with anyone who so much as glanced my direction and learned something from even rushed exchanges.

In Butte County, we stopped in a tidy suburban neighborhood when we saw Ronald Bretherton in overalls and a pith helmet watering his roses. He said he sometimes used dishwater to keep them alive. His wife, Margaret, had died a few years ago, and he had me sniff her favorite, Double Delight. It smelled like fruit and sugar.

In a country community near tiny Riverdale in the Central Valley, Chris Harp let us bounce along with him in his pickup truck while he raised and lowered gates that diverted canal water to farmers’ fields. His job was called ditch tender, or sometimes “water god.”

I watched his co-worker and best friend since kindergarten throw him a just-picked watermelon. Chris said he would have to move if it didn’t rain this year.

In Sequoia National Park, we hiked to a spot of baby sequoias with Ben Jacobs. The firefighter had recently retired as the park’s fuel resource manager, and he was worried about the trees he’d spent a career trying to protect. Snowpack insulates trees, and little snow for four years was uncharted territory.

He propped up a tiny sprout that had fallen over.

“Pissing in the wind,” he said, but gave a defiant shrug.

In Chico, mechanic Michael Ramirez described all the wondrous vegetables he usually grows in his garden. He hadn’t planted this year because he lives near Lake Oroville and had watched the reservoir drop. He didn’t know if his one garden could help, but he had three children and he wanted them to see him trying to do the right thing.

During our trip, the drumbeat that El Nino was coming was growing louder. Fish were where they shouldn’t be. Ocean temperatures were warmer. Los Angeles was getting strange rainstorms in July.

But for now, at least, California was burning. The day we left Chico, there were smoke clouds from major wildfires in every direction. The parking lot was full of tired, dirty firefighters. They played with Murphy and showed me photos of their dogs back home.

‘Some scientists think it’s already too late’

When we returned from our travels, I dropped Murphy and my bags in Fresno and drove to San Francisco. I’d made a commitment to be on a drought panel at a journalism conference.

The city was lush and green. After weeks in small towns, it was strange to see the drought reduced to reminders to reuse a towel or having to ask for water in a restaurant, instead of fallow fields, idled ski resorts and pastures on fire.

Panelist Dennis Dimick, environmental editor with National Geographic, showed photographs and satellite technology that in one sweep took in snowless mountaintops around the world. He talked about charting global aquifers that were dropping. He said some scientists think it’s already too late.

I thought about a thunderstorm during a Sierra sunset. The scent of Margaret’s favorite rose. Murphy drawing a crowd when he swims in circles biting the water. Ben propping up the sequoia sprout. Marci recycling water for her hummingbirds. Michael not planting his lemon cucumbers. Exhausted firefighters missing home but moving on to the next out-of-control wildfire.

Along the roads of California, rivers have slowed and the winter snows never came. Everyone we met was uneasy. But no one was ready to say it was too late.

This story was originally published August 19, 2015 at 9:51 PM with the headline "Drought’s hard lesson: ‘When water is life’."