Becoming Story by Greg Sarris

Author:Greg Sarris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Heyday

June 2123

THE GARDEN

Grandfather

I sit below Wapama Falls; perhaps I’m on the same boulder where you sat when you first visited. Same company, too: a squawking jay; a scraggly pine, stoic observer on the cliff above. But what I see you only imagined.

Here they are again, the oaks with “massive rugged trunks four to six feet in diameter” in full splendor, magnificent, each grove an immense edifice, a palace on the valley floor. Dwellings of willow and cottonwood and alder overlook the gold-lit Tuolumne and its bogs and marshes. Purples and yellows glow so intense in this light you’d think the flowers—irises, lupines, goldenrods, and sunflowers—had swallowed a share of the sun.

Bighorn sheep travel east below Kolana, blending with the landscape but for their white rears. Below me, a deer exits her cover of manzanita; two fawns with faded white spots follow. What’s in the low brush I can’t tell—a coyote waking for its nighttime prowl, chipmunks, lizards?

Oh, and the birds. Close to me, in addition to the jay, are a pileated woodpecker mounting the trunk of a sugar pine, and smaller birds darting about the brush: finches, sparrows and wrens. Doves flap overhead, going north to roosts higher in the hills. A pair of peregrine falcons twirl and dive in the distance, not hunting but joyously playing, if not merely boasting their skill in the air. A condor glides in this direction from Kolana. Its shadow across the valley floor is the size of a small airplane.

Five feet away is a bear trail. It leads east past the falls, then north over the cliffs and out of the valley. Black bears have been back in Hetch Hetchy for years. They feed on the lush berry gardens and eat pine nuts and acorns. They are timid generally and hide, though sometimes in the evening you can find them on their way into the valley to feed.

The world reveres this place. It’s a university with keys— stories, Grandfather—to our continued survival on the planet. Its natural libraries are the richest. Scholars worldwide come here looking for clues to replicate its beauty and harmony.

We know some important answers. There isn’t—and never will be—a virgin garden. Lest this work, this living museum, be diminished, human intervention is necessary, as you suspected, Grandfather. We are a part, not apart, and we play a role. Plant and animal communities have stabilized—yes, ponderosa pines and incense cedars are 125 to 150 feet high—but require constant attention.

Cameras the size of eraser heads strategically located in trees and cliffs monitor every creature, each blossom and blade of grass, all of which are accounted for in a master computer that helps determine any tension among species, overcrowding as well as undercrowding.

Removal of an extra raccoon or blue fox is simple and relatively painless. Inside each camera is a pin-sized stun gun that emits electronic rays to temporarily sedate the animal until park gardeners can retrieve and relocate it.

Paths lead everywhere. Off the main trail that circles the valley you can

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