REFUGEES

            We came to the Sacramento River Delta, my beagle partner and I, as refugees from the America of the 21^st Century, settled in a cedar-shake-sided cottage in Rio Vista, and began our explorations.  If you draw a circle with Rio Vista as its center and a radius of 25 miles, you will find the perimeter to be indistinguishable from anywhere else in contemporary California, with the big box stores, fast food franchises, huge glitzy malls, small tacky strip malls, pretentious developments, motels, and desperate anonymity: To the south Antioch, Pittsburg, and Walnut Creek blend into Richmond, Berkeley,  Oakland, and the rest of the teeming Bay Area. Twenty-five miles west, Dixon, Vacaville, Fairfield, and Vallejo stretch along the Highway 80 corridor.  To the north are Davis, Elk Grove, and the outskirts of Sacramento, and in the east sprawl Lodi and Stockton.

            The center of this circle of approximately 50 miles in diameter is the delta, a complex waterway of meandering rivers—the Sacramento and the San Joaquin and the Mokelumne—and sloughs, which are the alternate channels rivers form.  And along the rivers and sloughs, bounded by them, are dozens and dozens of islands, land areas completely surrounded by water.  From the mid-Nineteenth to the mid-Twentieth Centuries, the waterways provided the only feasible method of transportation, steamboats, that could bring supplies in and out of central California.  By the middle of the Twentieth Century, railroads and highways had replaced river travel, leaving Rio Vista and many other little river towns suspended in a wonderful time warp.

            Here it is possible to experience the best of an earlier time--the quiet neighborhoods of older but well-kept houses, friendly people, locally owned businesses, community activities—while relinquishing none of the genuine advantages of the 21^st Century.  Indeed, with its natural gas wells and huge wind farms, the delta is leading the way in green technology.

            Amber, the previously mentioned beagle and I, are exploring and learning about the delta. We are also learning about each other and how to best manage a close relationship between members of different species.  These two kinds of exploration are the focus of the observations and comments here, so much as there is any.