The Flood of February 2017 William Street Park

Soccer Field Turns into Lake in a Night and a Day

Only the Ducks Seemed Pleased

My Path Through Coyote Creek's 100 Year Flood

   February 22nd 2017 is the day I learned that gophers and moles will swim when their lives depend upon it. I walked down the street with family friends and neighbors to find the scrambled chaos of a flood crisis at the William Street Bridge on Wednesday morning. Our walk happened before, but only hours before, the entire neighborhood flooded and people had to drive through streets that were sudden temporary creeks, take household tools like push brooms and shovels to unclog storm drains in an attempt to save their houses and yards, push cars to higher ground. Some people were barefoot and others shouted out of SUVs for their loved ones to get in the ^#!~* car already--"we're outta here!" It was a scene of panic and confusion. Some of us just stood there staring at the swirling water on 21st street at the corner store. We all had this numb or aghast expression on our faces even the German shepherd standing against a garage on San Antonio and South 22nd street. We used to call it "Goldstone's" and then "Guru's" but it has since changed hands a few times. It's now called 'San Antonio Market.' A man was locking up the door in the small lift (like a heel) between the store entrance and the sidewalk. The sidewalk was all moving water. I saw a woman plunge with a yelp thigh deep into a storm drain as she attempted to cross San Antonio Street. Photos following this blogpost I took on Thursday morning, post flood, wearing rubber boots and plastic pants. I had to walk up the middle double stripe of San Antonio several blocks to avoid the murky and swirling flowing sidewalks and streets on Wednesday night. I was wearing a black skirt and black shoes (since thrown away) and was worried about all the distracted drivers whose wheels were sending up brown waves of water hitting me or just sliding over since I had heard cars are able to float in 6" of water. I needed to get home and see our street and house. I called my dad and urged him to take a look outside because I was fording a stream to come home and wet to somewhere above my ankles from steering to the shallower areas. "Check it out!" I only remember keeping my goal in mind (getting home) and stopping to thank my Mexican neighbors actively battling the rising waters. Evidently, they were the ones losing ground and the creek meandered into their backyards and submerged the cars on the street. We were being swallowed and watching it happen. I sat with my parents and watched it all over again several times on the news. It was late on Wednesday on the 10:00 p.m. news before we were seeing media images and receiving assurances that the floodwaters had peaked and were receding. Many of us had been watching trees and other landmarks such as notches on the bridges to guess at the water level and the "creep." I've decided to do the shots on their own and the narrative on its own.

Guadalupe River Trail - River Oaks Footbridge to Ulistac Natural Area Ramp

Blue-blossom ceanothus

     When February revisits the Santa Clara Valley my fingers begin to tingle and the only relief turns out to be hours of vigorous weeding. Okay-granted. I do relieve all that vigorous weeding with bouts of dreamy weeding as the Red-tailed hawk slowly circles the sky. She puts everyone in her domain on alert with her air tearing cries. The earth is soft and yielding after being pounded and kneaded by series of heavy rains; Invasive annual grasses surrender the soil much more easily than they are wont to at drier times. The grasses are soft in my hands, and as I pull them out and pile them in stringy heaps I am soon rewarded with bundles of ceanothus blossoms bursting forth and all the bees drawn hither who lend me their subtle, warm companionship as they tumble the flowers. Nearby animals do not hesitate to maximize on unearthed insects, freed up flowers and sleepy seeds my hands and thrashing form shake down from their withered chambers. About an hour into my work, I am no longer separate from all this nonstop interaction and mutualism. No longer foreign to the busy oneness enveloping me.

I got off light-rail at River Oaks Station and crossed the bridge over the Guadalupe which is out past Valley Transportation Authority offices and new playground built for the apartments adjacent to the the river trail. People of all ages and dogs of every size were out enjoying their strolls, jogs, and bike rides. Here's a view of the trail after I have crossed over into Santa Clara but before I have reached the down ramp into Ulistac.

Santa Clara apartments and Guadalupe RT Levee

The GRT parallels apartment complexes so that it takes you past people's kitchens and bedrooms. I gaze at balcony decorations and container gardens on my way by. The trail is heavily used by office workers and other residents. Thamien Park and Rivermark are very close. People commute over the bridge to go to Safeway or else wander over to Peet's and other amenities over in Rivermark (Stone Cold Creamery, Smash Burger, Posh Bagel, the Prolific Oven among others).

    Don Callejon students play on the Thamien Park field and the young children enjoy the sand and playground at Thamien Park while families, often mothers with young children, visit. Older folks take advantage of shaded benches near the tennis courts and behold the pageantry. There is also a well-tended basketball court where quick games are often in progress or children zip around on small bicycles. If you walk up the switchback ramp from the Thamien tennis and basketball courts you come upon a bench and overlook with a rail, but what you gaze upon is a litter and rubber ball graveyard.

Trash Clog

Heading north on the trail, in several minutes I come to the Hetch Hetchy change over station and the footramp down to UNAREP's work shed at Ulistac.
    There is a charcoal black fence lizard sunning on the lower boards. He welcomes me into Ulistac Natural Area with curious upward tilts of his perfect little head. I get his picture before he slides out of sight only coming right back to watch me from the T of the boards. His eyes look deep dark and intelligent to me.
I get a sunny feeling all over me from my brief flirtation with Lizard. This special place is full of welcome.

Greeter

"Coyotes" Invocation

Language Dog

                                            Hey, hey Coyote come to my poem!

                                            I am cooking up duck, snake, deer,

                                            and you're called here Coyote!

                                           "Hey, Man have you seen Coyote?"

                                           "Oh yeah. Over up on the hill and down by the creek,

                                            roaming the brush and weaving in dreams. . . 

                                            Coyote running through dreamtime 

                                            miles and miles all night long.

                                            Coyote worked a new song from all the torn pieces--

                                            He raised up a new song."

                                            "I heard," said Spider. "I heard too," Hawk said.  

                                            "Heard him," said Frog and Eagle.

                                            Coyote's song sounded like some of the old ones,

                                            new waters over old rocks.

                                            We seen him with the moon

                                            and some girls, seen all their shadows, 

                                            all his women dancing on the rocks like a painting.

                                            Red rock held them all flowing together.

                                            So come to the poem Coyote,

                                            maybe on your way back here?

                                            Ha ha yip yip wooh

                                            meaning something like I might

                                            unless my nose turns me another way.

                                            You want me, watch out for me! 

                                            I am always coming around.

                                            Ahh Haiyeee!

San Jose State University

Tower Hall

    The Tower Hall we see standing today as the center piece for San Jose State University dates from 1910. I often did some leisurely study on the lawn surrounding the Tower and imagined my essays taking form as the sun's rays soothed me into a nap. The lawn was always a popular frisbee spot, a place to whisper secrets to your busom buddy, sunbathe and people watch, or soak in a novel for your Faulkner seminar. It was an environ of possibility where the future was near but not unsettlingly so. I was an almost-teacher at the oldest teacher's college in California
         

Tower Hall grounds (SJSU Archives)

--a lot easier than being a practicing teacher inside four walls in front of flesh and blood middle or high school students who, as a general rule, would rather be free or at least on an unchaperoned trip spending gobs of someone else's money at Great America's Amusement Park. I picnicked with my ideals. I wore shorts. The sun ran his indulgent warm fingers through my hair. It was an idyll. Those drifty and sweet midday afternoons were my 'Apple' rather than that smudgy apple sitting on a desk in a room permitting precious little natural light-- a certain apple with its gloom and fate-- a lunchbox apple holding down 80 quizzes yet-to-be-graded, recorded, and returned to their affronted owners. No. There was not "an app for that" yet.
    But, emerging from the daydream and resuming our walk. . . I headed over to the Department of Biological Sciences Botany Garden just north of Duncan Hall. My father taught as a professor of Meteorology for twenty years inside Carl D. Duncan Hall and his office was there too. I considered this my father's building when I was a little girl:

Dad's Carl D. Duncan Hall

You had to get in an elevator and stand in front of a nice lady who wore glasses around her neck and tell her about your school day before you could talk to your dad. We often walked home together after the bell rang at Horse-Man (Horace Man Elementary) and I found him in his office. I knew strange things occurred in his white and black blockish building because one day my dad shattered a banana over a lab counter in front of my whole fourth grade class, making our teacher blink hard and a few boys back up on their heels.
    In the basement of the building there were slow and bored looking fish hovering in tanks in the walls. I peered at them before getting back in the elevator whenever I pushed the elevator's down arrow on accident.
    On a good day Professor MacKay might have a few things to finish up and I'd go to the candy machine with the giant buttons to buy some Lifesavers or a Hersheys. As you can see, the place is crisscrossed with memories for me.
    I took a few pictures outside Duncan Hall of the California natives in the Botany Garden. Students, interns, and professors planted specimens from 42 different plant families in this small area beginning the project in the 1980s. Below is deergrass, a perennial bunchgrass which was outpaced by invasive grasses during the 1700s. Increasingly I encounter this graceful California native among landscape selections around homes, industrial buildings, and in parks such as the Guadalupe Rotary Playgarden. They sway gently with the breezes. Their tall flower stalks light up sometimes a warm and humble golden-brown.

Muhlenbergia rigens

   
  

To Ulistac Once More

California Wild Rose

    Yesterday I walked and weeded at Ulistac. Walking while weeding is different from going out for a walk and from hiking. It is like 2 steps- weed, carry weeds, 5 steps- weed some more, forget where you were, go back to beginning. It is in fact a lot like turning in circles, just with more stops and muddier. It's more productive than spinning, in a sense, at least in the short view. Of course, the weeds return and round you go. Bending down and touching the ground is also more like taking a walk as your two-year old self because you notice more at ground level. There are earthworms and stones. There are places where a Huckleberry vine stitches itself across the ground. There are the seed leaves of a buckeye brought forth by many closely spaced rainstorms followed by a strand of crisp, sunny January days. The buckeye seeds the volunteers tucked in several short weeks, or perhaps it was months, ago sprout up so close to ground level that you would not have seen them were you standing up or else in passing. It was their strange so-green-it-is-purple hue which caught your eye. You have to narrow your world and become wee faeirie size. Little ladybugs become the size of small dogs. The squeaky hummingbird over your head is getting around a lot more today. Weeding is like reading the earth with your hands.

    I also cut sprigs from willow, Toyonberry, Flannel bush and Mulefat and left them pondering in a bucket of magic solution which Dennis, the Site Manager at Ulistac, had prepared and left for them. 'Site Manager' does not really represent fairly what Dennis is to Ulistac Natural Area and the collective vision at the soul of the place. He's a diplomat and visionary, a scholar and a laborer. Some like to call him the 'John Muir of Ulistac.' You have to go there and shake his hand to really get it. Come here. Dig with us. Get to know new plants (their fragrances, their desires, even their secret powers);  move mulch, restore California's native habitat and meet a dedicated, impassioned community builder who has helped plan and tend this beautiful sanctuary. Our work sessions are the 1st Saturday and the 3rd Sunday of every month, ongoing, from 10:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m (until we switch to summertime hours; please refer to Ulistac.org for more details.)
    There are many special persons to meet in the Ulistac network. Some of my dearest friends out there are among the wildlife and after these several years, even the plants. The sages have flesh just like we do. The ceanothus has its time of climax. They trees too have their beginnings and their endings. Others inhabitants are the Old Ones who walk the place; guardians. They knew the bears, hunted elk and deer, fished in the river, and made their seasonal villages there for thousands of years. It is a powerful spot. When I see the children play as I stroll or during my work, I like to think of the Ohlone children 300 or 700 years ago also running, rolling and chasing around. At the Annual Wildflower Celebration children get a chance to play the staves or clap clapper sticks made from the straight limbs of the elderberry, One long-time volunteer has made hoops of grapevine and has devised a spear throwing activity. Visitors, longtime friends of Ulistac, from the Ohlone community also participate and spread cultural knowledge. Last year we had a Native Californian story-teller. We volunteers do what we can to inform ourselves and share with the public, but there is something very anchored and graceful about someone of Ohlone heritage speaking their history and tradition. It is always an honor.
    When you are working on the ground, little bushtits zigzagging in the Coyote brush beside you are from this new perspective pretty big and they look down upon you, head tilted. These birds are scarcely larger than a hummingbird and clothed in muted mousy grey and slate feathers. They are gregarious and fidgety. From my kneeling position, they were easy to notice. They did not scatter to the next shrub like they generally do when I surprise them with all my movement. I was close enough to see their polished little black eyes. Some of the best birding is done weeding (and there's my second open invitation to join with us on weekend work sessions).
    Weeding is quiet so the little chipping birds are really all you hear except for when the grass begrudgingly tears from the soil. I have to say, though I practice no formal religion, I felt cleansed after four hours of weeding as though coming away from focused prayer. It returns and returns. It's like grasping the hand of a great-great grandparent. Your body reaches through the eras. It is a very old song.

                                                                                 

                                                                                  Salvia apiana

Post in Progress (invoking the poem)

   

Park Avenue Bridge Trail Entry 

  Reader, honestly, I am stuck on Coyote. S-he is so important to the heritage and mythology of our region that I find myself stymied. I am stuck in the same pair of pajamas even longer than is typical for me. Nevermind. I plan to leave a sketch here, in the nature of a seed, and return when Coyote deems the time is right, trotting up to me with a poem in his mouth or some kind of trickster offer of a deal (I will not be able to refuse) which will help me out here. He'll probably tell me to follow him and join in some misadventure after which he'll give me the first line or perhaps the central image. He will make me get lost and I'll have bloody feet. I am waiting for a poem to burble. Coyote is laughing. He is always laughing and knows everybody.
    I believe the best way I can respond to Peter Schifrin's sculptures "Coyotes" as well as Coyote himself is in the language of poetry. They are 16' bronze coyotes mounted up high on the Park Ave. Bridge just west of the Center for Performing Arts. Here is one of the pair singing--

Coyote Howling

Underneath this bridge is the sunset meeting spot for a bunch of tricksters who dress in black. They were smoking and huddling here after a heavy rain and rising waters. Some of them eyed my camera warily. One of them was howling something or other. The scene under the bridge was black and gray with all the concrete and the Guadalupe churning down to the SF Bay.
    Coyote is a deity but is also a sort of brother, both helpful and tricky, to people in Native North American mythology. The Ohlone people who lived along the Guadalupe as well as other areas both south and north of here told stories about Coyote, sang about Coyote, and honored him among Eagle, Hummingbird, Crow, Lizard, Hawk, Badger and other Animal People. He was there with his friends in council to form the world and First Peoples. Schifrin's work includes plaques with etched fragments of Ohlone sacred narrative which tell the story of Coyote and the beginning of the Ohlone culture. Coyote mentored the Ohlone in the elements of living well in their environment; he showed them the oak tree and its food. He taught them to fish. At the same time, he loves a good joke whether played on himself or anyone else. S-he is incurably curious and, in some tales, lustful too.    
   There are as many stories about Coyote in California (and all over North America) as there are hairs crowded in his fur. S-he is one unending story. He's got my poem in his back pocket. Coyote Was Here. Coyote Is Here. Coyote speaks. The Ohlone are also still speaking: "We are still here." Coyote is at home here; he travels the riparian corridors and the hills sing to each other in his high, raw voice. It sounds at once beside us and a few ridges away from here. He can do that thing of being here and there.
    Coyote after your nap or if you're looking for some trouble today, lead me to the poem. Call to me. Sing to me in your ancient language and I will listen and try to tell your song to the others.

River in Black and Gray