To be a Forty-Niner

I live a blessed life. As I sit in front of my computer I see to my right, tacked to the wall, a list of "rules"published by the Immaculate Heart College Art Department - does this place really exist? I don't know.... Of all ten rules, I think the one that I most live by is number seven, "Rule 7: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It's the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things." Rule 6 might be number two on my list, "Nothing is a mistake. There's no win and no fail. There's only make.  I live a blessed life because opportunity is constantly around my corner. My most recent blessing is the fortune to have been born into a family willing and capable of supporting me in pursuit of my life endeavors. Soon, I will be living and farming on a piece of land large enough and beautiful enough to get lost in. The feeling of this fortune is indescribable. I feel my roots growing and growing and growing and not sensing bedrock any time soon.

It might sound strange to hear, but I feel like a 49er. I've struck it rich and the nuggets in the river are just the beginning. That's on the one hand, on the other hand I feel like a 49er because I just read a book called "The Diary of a Forty-Niner". Yeah, folks, I'm talking about the gold rush Forty-Niners, not the football team, although, I could probably draw parallel's given this year's season. Where do I live? How did I come to be here? How did it all happen? What was it like, in that beginning? My mom, Ginger, bought this book for me because, well, we live in the gold country! And not only that, we're right in the thick of it. This Diary of a Forty-Niner tells the story of how it was in those days right in my new neighborhood! Terms such as Brush Creek, Rock Creek, Selby Flat, Nevada City, Yuba, and Round Mountain are thrown around like it was somebody writing about this place today! And yet, this diary is over 150 years old! The new farm is ON Brush Creek proper. 

Reading this book has given me a tremendous sense of place. I mean, I grew up in this "place" that we call Nevada City, inside Nevada County, in California, in the United States of America, and yet, what this book has inspired in me is a new feeling. I feel a much greater understanding of the history of this place, at least as back as far as these European Immigrants turned Americans goes. This is the history that I identify with more than any other. I love this place, I always have, but now, to have a sense of beginning, of where "we" come from in the recent annuls of history has brought a deeper understanding of the spirit that emerged at that time. I felt a strong sense of fellowship with the man who wrote this diary, I identified with his appreciation of this place and the freedom that was found through living in appreciation to nature here. Not to say that these guys were not also vastly degrading the landscape simultaneously, but that there did exist, at least within this fellow, a deeper sense of connection. Parts made me sad, like the reference to sugar pines regularly being twelve feet in diameter, or the new mining techniques that used water to wash the top soil off and away, down the streams and rivers, so as to expose the sediments below that contain the gold, against the bed rock. Not to mention the racist attitude towards the Mexican "greaseheads" and the Chinese "chinks". But, still, to imagine this place at this crucible in history. A time when unprecedented "wealth" in the form of gold was being discovered left and right and the effects of this drove a transformation of the country in waves and tides with the influx of all types of people, products of "civilization", and a invasive mentality of the earth as resource existing primarily for the benefit of man - by man I mean White people. 

Despite these facts, there was something else that brought me in and gave me a greater feeling of belonging, or at least understanding, here, of this place. It was all about the gold. Most people did not have plans to make a life "out there in California". If there was gold, that was the point - it was worth more than anything. Get your fortune and head back home to New England a rich man. And so what many people thought would be a short-lived extraction of a resource followed by abandonment became two and then five, and then fifteen years ongoing, towns began to build themselves, people started to make a home out here - either in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada or by the Bay, in San Francisco. 

California was becoming etched into the cultural consciousness as the land of plenty, the land of opportunity, the land of freedom. 

Today, still, the inertia of the gold rush is in play in California and in the minds of people throughout the United States and the World. It's the spirit fostered by the gold rush that has continued. I look at my life, my life here around Nevada City. My life here is not about gold. It's not even about riches! But it is most definitely about this PLACE! This is my home and I LOVE my home. I love the tall pine trees on the horizon, I love the amazing sunsets we seem to get every other evening, I love our dry hot Summers, our perfect Springs and Autumns and I even love our relatively mild Winters. I love the Yuba River, not for it's accumulation of gold from its tributary streams, but for the smooth granite rocks, the greenish blue clear water in the summer and the mossy trees on the north facing slopes. I love the ups and downs of the terrain. The micro-climates, the plants, the animals, and the PEOPLE. The people here love this place. They know what special place it is. I might go so far as to say that one of the reasons that this spirit of appreciation is so strong here has to do with the little not-so-secret-economy of this place. Much like the gold rush allowed folks to live a life with a certain freedom and mobility, thus endearing a spirit of gradual opening to "the different", the ganja economy has supported a new wave of Forty-Niners who actually do want to live here, who have chosen to live here because of the beauty they see and the community they sense. Now don't get me wrong, it is definitely NOT all about the ganja economy, directly at least. I, for one, do not dredge the ganja streams to support my lifestyle. Undoubtedly some or a lot of those folks hanging at the patch or shopping at the farmers market are spending their "green" to buy my veggies.

I might have digressed. Basically, anybody living in Nevada County, and definitely Nevada City, should read this book, "The Diary of a Forty-Niner". It is a tremendous part of our histories and in me it has instilled a deeper sense of appreciation of that time for what it was and a new sense of wanting to discover more of that history. To visit the historical library and find out more about where exactly I live!