Excerpts from
Passion for Place
Community Reflections on the Carmel River Watershed
David Gubernick
I slowly approached with camera in hand and sat cross-legged about ten feet away. The kit appeared to be totally oblivious to my presence. It was a thrill to be that close and to see the details of its face, to hear it breathing and to photograph it. I was lost in time, in a dreamlike state where nothing else existed except for me and the young fox. The magic trance was broken suddenly by a growl from the kits’ mother or father who was sitting on the roof of my car intently staring at me. I retreated and gave thanks to the kits and parent fox for the gift of their presence.
Bill Leahy
There’s one little Swainson’s thrush that flies thousands of miles to South America, returning every year to the same thirteen-acre patch of protected Carmel River landscape. Fish struggle to hang on in the river’s deep pools; questions and controversies remain about the Monterey Peninsula’s water supply. None of what we hope to accomplish will be easy. I think about the steadfast determination of that little songbird whose understanding of the power of place is
etched into the racing rhythms of its heartbeat, and I feel certain that as a community we can come together and for generations to come care for the Carmel River as it has cared for us….
May Waldroup
Slowly, and ever so quietly, I reached the fence and came face to face with a mountain lion! We locked eyes. Those beautiful amber eyes were set in a head that has no equal in beauty it seems. I had never seen a mountain lion, had longed for an encounter yet feared it. We both stood still—looked—and a spiritual connection was there between us for a moment, two creatures of the earth in a first meeting. Then I lost my balance just slightly and that small move broke the bond. One last look the lion gave me, then turned and with the grace of a dandelion seed in the wind bounded away from me, back into a thicket at the edge of my garden. I was stunned. Nothing in my life had ever brought me such a flow of feelings of exhilaration. I felt I could fly! What a moment of superb joy.
Robert Reese
The longer we spent in the river, the more effortlessly and quietly we moved. The effect was
intoxicating, providing a sense of attention and affinity with the water. I did not want to feel
again the sequence of daily events, of analysis and deliberation—just the affirmative hues of
warmth and physical activity. Pilar, fish, rock, wind, and water were all joined by movement
and light, creating a sort of participatory haiku. Walking in the river is sometimes like that. In
the late afternoon, the deep brown, silky bottom of the river, the ribbons of tiny fish, and the
wheeling geese fall away—fall away and the music of our life is in them.
Pam Krone-Davis
To the human eye my place of birth—in Pine Valley on the Carmel River—was a serene mountain stream, a tree-lined, babbling brook bathed in sunlight and bedazzled with smooth granite boulders, glittering with mica inlays. But to me, as a juvenile steelhead, it was a place filled with shadows, unknowns, and the need to be on constant alert to the nearest hiding place. Surrounded as I was by water, my eyes were mostly attuned to the nuances of light and dark, to abrupt changes in the shadowy content that lay somewhere outside the waters overhead, in a world I had no contact with and could not know. None-the-less, it was a world that constantly haunted me as I darted in and out of crevasses to escape the shadowy masses that continually startled me into instant flight behind a ledge, beneath a rock or into a dark shelter. At any moment a blue heron, standing so still and silent, could end my life with the stab of his yellow beak. A raccoon could grab me in his palms and bite me in half with his sharp teeth. My life was a daily struggle to eat without being eaten, to find water cool enough to meet my oxygen needs and to fulfill my instinctual urgings, that would eventually drive me to do strange things and to undertake journeys of great length.
Website © 2012, Passion for Place. All Rights reserved.
Passion for Place
Community Reflections on the Carmel River Watershed
David Gubernick
I slowly approached with camera in hand and sat cross-legged about ten feet away. The kit appeared to be totally oblivious to my presence. It was a thrill to be that close and to see the details of its face, to hear it breathing and to photograph it. I was lost in time, in a dreamlike state where nothing else existed except for me and the young fox. The magic trance was broken suddenly by a growl from the kits’ mother or father who was sitting on the roof of my car intently staring at me. I retreated and gave thanks to the kits and parent fox for the gift of their presence.
Bill Leahy
There’s one little Swainson’s thrush that flies thousands of miles to South America, returning every year to the same thirteen-acre patch of protected Carmel River landscape. Fish struggle to hang on in the river’s deep pools; questions and controversies remain about the Monterey Peninsula’s water supply. None of what we hope to accomplish will be easy. I think about the steadfast determination of that little songbird whose understanding of the power of place is
etched into the racing rhythms of its heartbeat, and I feel certain that as a community we can come together and for generations to come care for the Carmel River as it has cared for us….
May Waldroup
Slowly, and ever so quietly, I reached the fence and came face to face with a mountain lion! We locked eyes. Those beautiful amber eyes were set in a head that has no equal in beauty it seems. I had never seen a mountain lion, had longed for an encounter yet feared it. We both stood still—looked—and a spiritual connection was there between us for a moment, two creatures of the earth in a first meeting. Then I lost my balance just slightly and that small move broke the bond. One last look the lion gave me, then turned and with the grace of a dandelion seed in the wind bounded away from me, back into a thicket at the edge of my garden. I was stunned. Nothing in my life had ever brought me such a flow of feelings of exhilaration. I felt I could fly! What a moment of superb joy.
Robert Reese
The longer we spent in the river, the more effortlessly and quietly we moved. The effect was
intoxicating, providing a sense of attention and affinity with the water. I did not want to feel
again the sequence of daily events, of analysis and deliberation—just the affirmative hues of
warmth and physical activity. Pilar, fish, rock, wind, and water were all joined by movement
and light, creating a sort of participatory haiku. Walking in the river is sometimes like that. In
the late afternoon, the deep brown, silky bottom of the river, the ribbons of tiny fish, and the
wheeling geese fall away—fall away and the music of our life is in them.
Pam Krone-Davis
To the human eye my place of birth—in Pine Valley on the Carmel River—was a serene mountain stream, a tree-lined, babbling brook bathed in sunlight and bedazzled with smooth granite boulders, glittering with mica inlays. But to me, as a juvenile steelhead, it was a place filled with shadows, unknowns, and the need to be on constant alert to the nearest hiding place. Surrounded as I was by water, my eyes were mostly attuned to the nuances of light and dark, to abrupt changes in the shadowy content that lay somewhere outside the waters overhead, in a world I had no contact with and could not know. None-the-less, it was a world that constantly haunted me as I darted in and out of crevasses to escape the shadowy masses that continually startled me into instant flight behind a ledge, beneath a rock or into a dark shelter. At any moment a blue heron, standing so still and silent, could end my life with the stab of his yellow beak. A raccoon could grab me in his palms and bite me in half with his sharp teeth. My life was a daily struggle to eat without being eaten, to find water cool enough to meet my oxygen needs and to fulfill my instinctual urgings, that would eventually drive me to do strange things and to undertake journeys of great length.
Website © 2012, Passion for Place. All Rights reserved.
