Luigi ponders a type of sedge called tules.

Although not domesticated, tules have (or had) a lot of interesting uses among the Native Americans of California, including in the construction of boats. People still build tule boats, mainly for fun. I bring all this up because of a recent article on some fascinating new thinking about how people spread around the world. It seems that there is increasing evidence that they may have done so by boat, including perhaps during the initial peopling of the Americas from Asia.

I mention this since I live in Tulare county California. The name comes from the Mexican word tular meaning tule swamp. My pastures are located by the Tule river and I irrigate them using its waters. Historically, the river had no outlet to the sea and so created a large, shallow seasonal lake and tule swamp on the valley floor below here. Now the water is distributed and the area is farmland and smallish farm towns. A flood control damn prevents inundation from heavy winter rains and spring snow melt in the Sierra Nevada mountains above - the source of the Tule river.

In The Yosemite - chapter 7, The Big Trees (1912) - John Muir gives us this image:

Between the heavy pine and silver fir zones towers the Big Tree (Sequoia gigantea), the king of all the conifers in the world, “the noblest of the noble race.” The groves nearest Yosemite Valley are about twenty miles to the westward and southward and are called the Tuolumne, Merced and Mariposa groves. It extends, a widely interrupted belt, from a very small grove on the middle fork of the American River to the head of Deer Creek, a distance of about 260 miles, its northern limit being near the thirty-ninth parallel, the southern a little below the thirty-sixth. The elevation of the belt above the sea varies from about 5000 to 8000 feet. From the American River to Kings River the species occurs only in small isolated groups so sparsely distributed along the belt that three of the gaps in it are from forty to sixty miles wide. But from Kings River south-ward the sequoia is not restricted to mere groves but extends across the wide rugged basins of the Kaweah and Tule Rivers in noble forests, a distance of nearly seventy miles, the continuity of this part of the belt being broken only by the main cañons. . . Descending the divide between the Kings and Kaweah Rivers you come to the grand forests that form the main continuous portion of the belt. Southward the giants become more and more irrepressibly exuberant, heaving their massive crowns into the sky from every ridge and slope, waving onward in graceful compliance with the complicated topography of the region. The finest of the Kaweah section of the belt is on the broad ridge between Marble Creek and the middle fork, and is called the Giant Forest. It extends from the granite headlands, overlooking the hot San Joaquin plains, to within a few miles of the cool glacial fountains of the summit peaks. The extreme upper limit of the belt is reached between the middle and south forks of the Kaweah at a height of 8400 feet, but the finest block of big tree forests in the entire belt is on the north fork of Tule River, and is included in the Sequoia National Park.

In the northern groves there are comparatively few young trees or saplings. But here for every old storm-beaten giant there are many in their prime and for each of these a crowd of hopeful young trees and saplings, growing vigorously on moraines, rocky edges, along water courses and meadows.

They are now called Sequoiadendron gigantea but are commonly known as Sierra redwood. Tule reeds and redwoods. Home.

Update: An afterthought.

This time of year when the rains are heavy - especially at higher elevations - the Tule river runs fast, roaring down the canyons rolling boulders the size of houses in the flood. You can hear them crashing from a great distance and at night you can see the sparks they ignite in their under water collisions, visual evidence of the energies involved in smoothing what were once jagged chunks of Sierra granite calved from the mountain peaks. The land is littered with such boulders - of every size - evidence of past floods and a warning of what might happen in future. A rock twice my height and nearly perfectly round is a stone's throw from my door. It seems to have some indistinct petroglyphs chipped into its side man high, mute evidence of the people that have lived here for eons. I wonder if my words launched into the network will endure as long as those ancient images? Will there be any evidence at all that I was here and partly aware?

Another Update: Selective visions

I've received some email from folks enchanted by the images of rugged beauty and natural power I've foisted on you while loving my land in words. In truth, it's not an accurate or rational account. Who tells unvarnished truths about their loved ones? This is not a comfortable place. Life is hard, people are poor, work is never ending and the rewards are meager by the standards of modern urban America. It's dangerous and dirty, either too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, too crowded or too lonely. You can safely enjoy the feelings I write about, but remember that they are the ululations of a mad man who sees a world that doesn't actually exist anywhere but in his mind.

Perhaps an analogy will clarify the situation. Those few godesses who still have mercy on me are exquisite to this "old man with broken teeth, stranded without love". But, if you knew them, you might well see undesirable crones. Perhaps when in a charitable mood you could see a type of beauty in faces worn long enough to own them, so that the inner woman is visible rather than concealed by the dewy flesh of youth, but it takes a trick of the light for most people to ever see so well, and will not happen quickly for any but the most jaded artists who are professional beauty seekers. . . or children.