Beginning at the Berryessa Gap above Winters, a vast and largely untraveled landscape extends northward to Snow Mountain. A part of the Inner Coast Range — which crosses through Yolo, Solano, Napa, Mendocino, Lake, Glenn and Colusa counties — the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument has few roads and fewer visitors. Dedicated by President Obama in 2015, this monument was expanded on May 2 by President Biden, along with the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument.
Both preserves hold cultural significance for Native American tribes and include wildlife corridors teeming with biodiversity. Due to Biden’s expansion, the BSMNM now protects a striking 11-mile ridgeline, sacred to the Patwin people, which was previously known as Walker Ridge and is now renamed “Molok Luyuk,” or “Condor Ridge” in the Patwin language. Taken as a whole, the BSMNM embraces the intersection of conservation, climate and Native American issues.
President Biden has created five such national monuments as part of his pledge to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030. Indigenous people often walk their watershed as an annual ceremony, carrying water from the headlands to the mouth, and chanting blessings as they go. When I learned about this practice, it made me think about my river, which is Putah Creek.
I have lived on Putah Creek and walked parts of it repeatedly over many years, but I had never traced its origins beyond the interruptive Berryessa Dam. I became in.