Delta Dreaming

An entry for the Ecotone Wiki topic on River and Estuary

It’s one of those places that though nearby — fifteen miles to the south-southeast will put you in the middle of a slough — we never get to. The Delta, formed by the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, consists of thousands of miles of sloughs, levees, submerged islands, channels, and river reaches, a maze of waterways and islands. We’re not aquatic sorts however, and its possibilities for boating and fishing don’t lure us. Levees, toe drains, and creeks block entry for those who travel by road.

If I cycle south from here as far as I can go, the road making jogs to the east occasionally, I reach Liberty Island, and can’t cross the slough on my bike. It’s a land of marshes, pastures, and always a stiff breeze. Beating upwind is never much fun on bicycle, and since the wind usually heads either north or south here, I am not wont to head that far.

I think we have made the east-to-west drive through the Delta once, starting off on Interstate 5, driving past the fields where the sandhill cranes spend the winter, and into the Delta proper. It’s rich agricultural land (I’ve been working recently with the digital state soils map and the Delta shows up as the area with the highest organic matter content), much of it lower than sea level and hence dependent on levees to stay dry. A map of the Delta shows a watery hole in the land pattern at Franks Tract, where the levee failed in 1937 and again in 1938 to flood the area permanently. Our exit from that trek across the Delta was at Rio Vista in Solano County, practically due south from where we live but a circuitous route from our house.

There’s a quirky book about the Delta which I recommend entitled Sturgeon Tales: Stories of the Delta by Charlie Soderquist, a great benefactor of UC Davis who unfortunately died recently. A talking sturgeon by the name of Sally features prominently in the stories, as well as a fleet of ghost ships. The book is beautifully illustrated with a set of watercolors that well capture the lazy verdure of the region.