Sonoma Mandala

Euphrat, Fred

ISBN 10: 0970372701 ISBN 13: 9780970372703

Publisher: Terra Books, 2000

Synopsis

Fred Euphrat’s Sonoma Mandala is a collection of essays that report on and celebrate Sonoma County. Deeply grounded in the terrain that Euphrat knows intimately, the essays also provide a clear, cognizant discussion of many issues that underlie current ecological debates around the country and the world.

Euphrat’s Mandala is personal and political, poetic and philosophical. The essays read as they were spoken on "Native Sonoma," a weekly feature on KRCB, the NPR affiliate station in Santa Rosa, California. Euphrat meditates, enthuses, warns, and informs. His topics range from mossy oaks, to fuzzy otters, to rain by the bucket, to water by the bottle. Readers meet the stellar jay and his mohawk; they look through a fisheye (not a camera lens, but the real thing); they search for agates, "little amber winks or moonstone blinks," on winter beaches, and learn to love the life-giving fires of late fall. No matter the topic, Euphrat’s voice comes through, clear and compassionate—a voice that comes from the head of a scientist, the hand of a poet, the eye of an artist, and the soul of a philosopher.

About this title

About the Author:

Fred Euphrat is a forester with a doctorate in watershed management from UC Berkeley. Through his business, Forest, Soil & Water, Fred manages forestland for both clients and family in Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino counties. He also does stream restoration and contract research on hydrology and forestry. His clients are small landowners, corporations, governments, and nonprofits.. His assignments have ranged from the Upper Mississippi to Nepal, and he has authored more than 20 articles and publications. Fred may be best known locally for "Native Sonoma," his weekly nature essays on KRCB, the National Public Radio affiliate station in Santa Rosa.

Fred currently serves as a board member on the Sonoma County Open Space Authority, the Dry Creek Valley Association, and the Friends of the Russian River.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Fisheye on the Eel

Looking through a fisheye at the Eel River (not the lens, the real thing) means looking upstream, head underwater. Looking for bugs, little lives to consume, caught in the froth moving past. It means looking up at the lines in the current at the flotsam moving through, searching for insect treats with hope--and hoping they don’t have hooks. It means watching the shallows for the little slow fish, shiny babies, quick but not as fast as me...one of the big fish in the pool, I think. And it means looking around for someone bigger, and the small place to hide where he can’t go.

I got a chance to see the fisheye world on the Middle Eel, above Covelo, just below Balm of Gilead Creek, in the Yolla Bolly Wilderness. Counting fish with Fish and Game on a blisteringly hot day, this annual trip was a passion and delight for cheerful humans, all intent on finding the summer steelhead.

The Middle Eel flows underground through its gravel cocoon, revealed only in pools where the winter flow has swept the sediment away. One person on the rock, above the pool, and I below, face mask on in the chilly water, swimming down, down to the coldest part of the deep green pit. The lunkers hunker, farther and farther from me. The summer steelhead brace themselves in a tightening knot, until, abruptly, one darts, then two, then four, then all shoot by. The swift wake from their big dark bodies pushing past—the water passes the shock wave through, brushing water by—over my skin, colder, tickling.

My job was to count the fish. I got nine, perhaps eleven, and another time fourteen. On top of the rock, the watcher gets another number, so we average. Rare data on a rare fish. A rare experience on a rare day. Once in a lifetime for me, and maybe once in a forever for the fish.

These winter days, the steelhead move upstream in the Eel, a turbid ribbon moving thousands of tons of dirt per square mile. It’s the siltiest big river in the continental United States. The fish flow uphill, smelling home, moving south from Humboldt Bay, hugging the west of the Coast Range, down to Branscomb on the South Fork, plying around Round Valley on the Middle Fork, touching Willits and Van Arsdale on the Main, up the Van Duzen into Forest Service land on South Fork Mountain, and sneaking behind Eureka on Yager Creek. The fish smell home, swim hard, and find...us.

How do we look through the fish eye? How do we smell through the fish nose? I think we look like culverts and rip rap, like fine sand and pavement. Like car bodies and fish screens. Like droughts and floods. I think we smell like gasoline. And I think we feel like oil.

Named for her lampreys, prized for her timber, famous for rainfall, steelhead, and seclusion, the Eel holds secrets that people try to learn. The miracle of the Eel plays out in her every inch, while our ignorance floods the canyon.

See the Eel with the fisheye view. It’s more than eye can imagine. It’s between the fish and you.

About this edition

• Publisher: Terra Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0970372701
• ISBN 13: 9780970372703
• Binding: Library Binding
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128