The canoe had languished by the pond for three years—ever since Rodger had died—because Caroline didn’t know how to tie it onto the truck. She used it only occasionally to shoo the wild geese off the pond, when too many of them came around at once and she didn’t want their mess all over the place.
“Don’t you want to take that canoe out to some mountain lake somewhere?” I asked as we gazed at it out the window.
“Sure I do, but…”
“But nothing, let’s go! All you need is to learn how to tie a trucker’s hitch, and I can show you that, easy.” We loaded the canoe onto the truck, Caroline got a knot-tying lesson and we headed up the mountain on a calm and cloudy day.
Lake Valley Reservoir is a little-known spot, near the convergence of Highway 80 and Highway 20, by Emigrant Gap, at about 6,000 feet elevation. We pulled into the parking lot, where there was one other truck. Other than a woman fishing on the shore, the lake was all ours.
We put in and started paddling. It’s a perfect-sized lake for a day trip, just big enough to spend an afternoon exploring. We saw some mergansers, a flock of geese feeding at the shore, a beautiful island and a stand of aspen trees beckoning from across the water. The aspens, their light green leaves turning yellow, were so pretty against the darker cedars and pines. We beached the canoe by the aspen grove and pulled out our picnic lunch. (I love picnics, or “piki-nikis,” as my Hawaiian friend Nona used to call them. Lunch always tastes good eaten outdoors in beautiful places.) Later we wandered down the beach and came across some tepee-like structures that Caroline called wikiups, made of sticks leaned together. When in use, the finished structure is covered with layers of leaves, moss and sticks to make it weatherproof. We talked about wikiups, partly because it is such a fun word to say. (In fact, I’m thinking of referring to my F-250 truck as a pickiup from now on.)
Paddling back across the lake, Caroline told me about the work she’s been doing as a docent for the local salmon restoration organization. She leads educational rafting trips along the Yuba River, telling people about the salmon and answering questions. So I learned some things. For one, the Yuba is the only river of the many that drain down out of the Sierras that still has a salmon run, due to the fact that it’s the only one that hasn’t been dammed at its lower end. The town of Redding, situated along the Sacramento River, which also still has a salmon run, is named after the “redds” (depressions in the river bottom) that the female salmon make to lay their eggs in. Said female salmon work so hard making those redds that they frequently wear their tails down all the way to the tailbone. Ouch!
I asked how the Yuba got its name, but Caroline didn’t know the answer to that one, so we looked it up when we got home. It seems the name was originally Uva River, named after the wild grapes that grow along it. (Grape is “uva” in Spanish, with the “v” pronounced like a “b.”) Sure enough, hiking along the river the day before, we had seen big grapevines; I’d been surprised to learn that they are native to the area, and I’d wished it had been earlier in the year so we could have picked their fruits.
Back in Grass Valley, we ended our afternoon with a nice soak in the hot tub: lazing in the steamy water, watching the late-afternoon sun play light games with the oaks and pines in the back meadow. Days like this are the kind I like to remember.
Ingrid Noyes, formerly of Marshall, makes her home wherever she happens to be.