California has always known climate change and desertification as can be clearly seen in the ghost towns in several parts of the state. One of the most famous is Bodie, a town frozen in time in a “state of arrested decay”.
Bodie is an original gold mining town from the late 1800’s. It started with about 20 miners and grew to an estimated 10,000 people by 1880! By then, the town of Bodie bustled with families, robbers, miners, merchants, gunfighters, prostitutes and people from every country in the world. At one time there was reported to be 65 saloons in town but as gold became scarce, fights and murder started booming. It was hell on Earth. There’s even a story about a little girl whose family was moving from San Francisco to Bodie, who wrote in her diary: “Goodbye God, I’m going to Bodie”.
When the mining profits went down the town was slowly abandoned and you can still see all kinds of personal and lifestyle items left abandoned in their original places; it was interesting to visit such a creepy place. It reminded us how quickly and abruptly a community can collapse when the natural resources that sustained its economy are exhausted.
The next day we got to the Black Canyon. This beautiful canyon is located on the Colorado River at the state line between Nevada and Arizona. Once a wild water torrent, the waters of Black Canyon now form a placid river that flows calmly from the famous Hoover Dam just a few miles upstream. The western wall of this dramatic gorge is in the El Dorado Mountains, and the eastern wall is in the Black Mountains of Arizona. The canyon gets its name from the black volcanic rocks that are found throughout the area. It was one of the hottest days of the year (nearly 48ºC!) and just the thought of inflating the boards made us weak in the knees. So we waited in the shade for a few hours and observed the locals’ relationship with the river.
We couldn’t help but wonder if this was the same river described in the epic tales such as “The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons” by J.W. Powell, full of superb descriptions of treacherous rapids and mighty canyons. Here what you find now is a calm and tamed river, full of motorboats, jet skis and children playing games. Again, such a scene makes you wonder about our urge to change the landscape and alter its primordial configuration to tame its powers or to allow human activities…
