“The intervals between rains give the finest weather possible”
Memoirs of W.T. Sherman Volume I
So writes W. T. Sherman of his first stay in Monterey, California in February of 1847. Recently I spent a few days close to the Carmel River just south of Monterey. While gazing along the Carmel valley, river, mountains and sea I thought about how it could have been like for my grandfather Sherman mounted on horseback exploring these very same places.
As in Sherman’s time this year’s winter rains marked their recent visit with “bright green grass with endless flowers”. While Sherman experienced something of a warmer tropical climate in Florida his growing years included winters in Ohio and later New York. Thus, a February of flowers and green fields remained vivid enough in his memory to write of it in detail years later in his memoirs.
Having grown up in New England I recall my initial disbelief of green hills and flowers typical in northern California in February after five days of precipitation. Similarly, I was shocked at the dryness and barren shrubbery of August. The hills of the ‘Golden State’ seemed highly over rated. But now like rain water I store expansive vistas of green hills and flowers for the arid dusty days of summer. I’ve now come to think of the hills that have turned a dreary brown as golden.
Before reaching Carmel I drove past the artichoke fields of Castroville and Salinas Valley. Then on through Seaside and Sand City the “pretty valley and sandy country covered by oak bushes and scrub” that Sherman writes of. Closer to the Monterey shoreline, dilapidated buildings of old Fort Ord, strip malls and parking lots have replaced oak bushes and scrub that Sherman once traversed with his horse.
However, once closer to Carmel the valley and river bird, fish and foul life resemble in kind if not in numbers what Sherman would have seen. Birds of all sorts were gathering for nesting, ducks and mallards were busy fishing for their breakfast, deer emerged from thickets and walked by their intruder (that would be me) towards the river’s edge to quench their morning thirst. A flock of geese flew overhead. “The Carmel is a lovely little river –John Steinbeck writes in Cannery Row—It isn’t very long but in its course it has everything a river should have.”
“It’s everything a river should be “
John Steinbeck Cannery Row Viking Press-Compass Book Edition, 1963
The river adroitly reflects the rainy and dry seasons of Carmel. Accordingly during rainy season it floods even violently and then subsides to what can seem a little more than a large stream as meanders through the valley and on to the Pacific a dozen miles or so to the west. This time the river was burbling with excitement as if its fresh waters knew the course would soon end-or begin in a vast ocean on the horizon.
Curious, I went with a friend to the Carmel River beach north of Point Lobos where the river shifts into a lagoon before flowing to the Pacific. When overtaken by high tide the seemingly small pool of water merges with the ocean. We learned that the hard way. We parked our car and enchanted with the afternoon sunlight and migratory birds in the lagoon we quickly walked over a sandbar to continue along the beach toward the southeast. However once the sun was setting we started heading back only to find that river waters of the lagoon and surf waters of the Pacific swallowed our little land bridge. Wading through the waters didn’t seem to be an option given the incrementally growing relentless surf of the Pacific.
The parking lot was within sight. But access was not. Immediately surrounding us was beach, water and no clear way of returning to the car without a ten-mile hike. Thankfully we encountered a local resident out for an evening stroll. She led us up the pathway from the otherwise isolated beach into adjacent streets and drove us along the coastal highway. Following the north side of the river we past the legendary Carmel mission, a turn of last century ranch now a restaurant-resort and made a quick turn through quaint neighborhood streets. With the sun setting over the Pacific, We reached the beach parking lot shortly before its closing.
With Steinbeck’s and Sherman’s descriptions of Carmel river and valley in mind, the river’s final egress to the Pacific emphatically declared as it were of convergence of memories of time and place flowing back into the sea.
“ When the wind blows – the grass whistles and whispers in myths and riddles and not in our language–the sea is always the sea”
Mary Oliver The Oak Tree Loves Patience Collection Blue Horses, Penguin Books 2014
And so it is.
