The Last Word
Baldwin, W. Andrew
THE LAST WORD W. Andrew Baldwin Wilderness Disneyland Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and wilderness which surround it. H e need the tonic of the...
...Rafts arc rare in the early morning, and few will attempt to run the river at very high water...
...Maiden At the river's edge, a young woman is sitting on a rock...
...There arc, in fact, about forty of them—river rafters, at play in Wilderness Disneyland...
...to do...
...Nothing moves...
...He is also an attorney and a member of the California Bar...
...Lower SOFAR is intended to be a senes of dams on the rafted section...
...every thirty seconds...
...On summer weekends, the revenue of the rafting companies—Wilderness Company, Outdoor Adventures, Wild River Tours, and others—will exceed $100,000 per day...
...H e need the tonic of the wtlderness—to wander sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow hen lurk...
...The South Fork of the American River in Et Dorado County, California, is the most popular whucwatcr rafting river in the western United States...
...Sundays, and holidays...
...Local water agencies have long intended to build projects called Lower and Upper SOFAR (for South Fork American River) which would dam and divert the river, further flooding the canyon under reservoirs and diverting water to support local real estate development...
...Horns blare...
...The rafters' impulse here is to scream, and they always do...
...In the rapids this would be unsafe, since anyone falling into the water would immediately be crushed by the next boat...
...They have tried to destroy the South Fork, but so far they have not succeeded...
...So many buses and vans pack the parking lot that all aisles arc filled...
...The last half mile of the trip is flat water...
...It is possible, for example, to be alone on the river in winter...
...This led rafters to file a lawsuit that threatened to delay or prevent construction...
...The suit has been settled by an agreement permitting upper SO-FAR to be built, provided river flows for rafters and kayakcrs are available on the upper river on Saturdays...
...affluent and hungry for pleasure...
...Much of the canyon is buried under reservoirs...
...At the end of the day, the rafters can buy their own wilderness Whitewater photos...
...On a summer weekend they sit...
...14 c require...
...Were it not for the masses of rafters and the rafting companies they support, the South Fork canyon would already have been completely destroyed...
...to smell the whispering sedge...
...The South Fork eventually flows into Folsom Reservoir...
...At a rock called "Troublemaker...
...can never have enough of nature...
...Another young woman just like her is sitting on the next rock...
...In California, someone is always trying to steal public waters—power companies, agribusiness, real estate developers and their allies in government agencies...
...Engines idle...
...that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsuneyed and unfaihomed by us because unfathomable...
...six to eight in each raft, in front of a guide who counts cadence as they paddle in unison, like slaves in Ben Hur...
...In smooth water, the rafts tailgate each other, sometimes bumper to bumper...
...The river his been discovered...
...and hear the booming of the snipe...
...The rafters, having nothing else W. Andrew- Baldwin practices medicine at Stanford Hospital, Stanford, California...
...sit in the hot sun and splash each other with their paddles...
...Enterprising photographers set up on the rocks and snap each boat as it passes...
...Henry David Thorcau...
...the river dives to the left and the raft, thrust over thin air, buckles and falls into the maw of a huge wave waiting below...
...it is convenient to millions of Californians...
...These projects have prolonged the wet season runoff, so they have inadvertently encouraged the growth of commercial rafting...
...So the rafts back up above the rapids, like lumbering airliners at LaGuardia, and wait their turn...
...Local people come out to see this...
...At the lake-out point, people stream up the hill and climb into buses...
...There is wilderness gridlock...
...It is far easier to destroy the wilderness than it is to destroy Wilderness Disneyland...
...Unless other environmental protests succeed in canceling the project, the upper section will become a weekend river...
...The clear water, quiet along the bank, laps at her feet...
...300 have passed...
...But so many people have been rafting in the canyon and so much money is being made there that SOFAR is in serious trouble...
...They have dried up Owens Lake, taken the Trinity River from the Indians, and dammed virtually every stream in the state...
...They listen to the rafters screaming, right on cue...
...About thirty seconds later there is another raft just like the first, then another, and another after that By the end of the day...
...She is eating prosciutto from a styrofoam plate...
...Some traces of Thoreau's "tonic" still exist along the South Fork...
...They sit in lounge chairs, playing their radios, drinking beer, and watching the rafts, one after another, go over the falls...
...They almost always get what they want...
...The rafters pay about $50 each to take the trip, or $300 to $400 per boat...
...She is screaming...
...The canyon owes its continued existence to the prosperity of Wilderness Disneyland...
...In 1982, the California legislature, influenced by the rafting companies and thousands of rafters, passed a bill that declared a ten-year moratorium on the construction of Lower SOFAR Upper SOFAR would be built above the most popular rafting section, but it would change the flow patterns along the rafted stretch below...
...She is wearing a hat made of beer cans...
...Power boats low the rafts on this final stretch...
...Several dams and power plants have already been built in the drainage of the South Fork...
Vol. 49 • December 1985 • No. 12
