Ramblings…

(Excerpted from “Ramblings, Recipes, & Reflections” by James N. Haag)

“I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches”
Monet Refuses the Operation by Lisa Mueller
Alive Together © Louisiana State Univ. Press

Where’s the start of the Capay Valley? Where’s the START of the Capay Valley? You want to know exactly and precisely where? Are you 100% sure you want to open this particular can of worms? It’s going to take 2,500 words for someone to attempt an answer! Now this is a “start” question which can fool you: simple on the surface, convoluted in its murky depths. Recall that newly-accepted “California Wild & Scenic River” Cache Creek (www.Motherlode.SierraClub.org/Yolano ) wriggles (wiggles? courses? plunges?) down this very same Capay Valley. Is that a neutral fact or does that instead clarify or muddy our quest?

This question came up innocently enough due to the emergence of another simple question. Said second question being: “Where shall we put the new ‘Welcome to Capay Valley’ sign?” This was, of course, being asked in the depths of a community meeting, and elicited a fast flurry of responses. “It’s not important,” a cooperative resident volunteered. “Only at the edge of town makes sense,“ another said. “Capay!” and “Esparto!” were both heard. An authoritative voice issued “Where I say to put it!” Some laughter rebounded around the room. So much for the second question. Now, back to the “entrance of our valley” problem Simple solution? Maybe. One could ask our new Capay Valley Vision umbrella group (www.CapayValleyVision.org ) for an answer, but it seems there may be no solid consensus as yet. Onwards with the search…

Permit me to be sidetracked by at least one diversion! Perhaps if one can answer the original question about the location of the starting point of the valley, it will shed light on how to even begin to answer other lurking questions yet to come. Furthermore, perhaps the answer itself is not as important as all that goes on in the process of examining the question, enmeshed as it is in its world of circumstances. A final speculation, however, on the second question before leaving it. Wouldn’t a tourist say “Put the sign where I can see it.” while a highway engineer would require locating it “Where it’s safe for traffic.” And wouldn’t the naturalist recommend “so it won’t spoil the view” and the anarchist with chain saw hope that “there’s no steel inside those wooden supporting posts?” Many sociological implications here with hopefully an intersection solution in this world. Not for this essay to answer in any case. Nevertheless, thousands of visitors over the decades since World War I have found our annual event the last Sunday of each February. (New Almond Festival site: www.EspartoChamber.org ) I haven’t heard any complaints from them yet about not being able to find the start of the valley fun. Not even from the happy motorcyclists!

Now, back to the initial location question. Is it of the type guaranteed to stir the stewpot of any committee of concerned citizens; even animate a 2-person conversation? Perhaps you are familiar with this situation for certain questions--put two people of opposite opinions to work on the solution and they’ll come up eventually with perhaps three opposing answers they can’t agree on and a committee might even come up with four or five answers. Why? Let’s see if we can’t find out why. Just examine below our simple short question from the viewpoint of a few of what will turn out to be its myriad 3-D sides and you’ll see for yourself that it’s depths are indeed verging on bottomless. Until now you probably thought Lake Tahoe was deep! Just wait until you start looking into the depths of this question with so many sides it recalls my high school math class project trying to build a 20-sided regular icosahedron, one of the five Platonic solids. More than you wanted to know? (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icosahedron )

Without trying to plunge too deeply into philosophy, can one ask about the seven words of our original question above: “Does an answer even exist?” Is this one of those questions such as “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Nevertheless to forge ahead, I trust not. One certainly should expect a simple answer to a simple question. “Are we alone?” is a simple question, isn't it? “At what instant does life start?” is a simple question. But what kind of simple? Isn’t ours though perhaps a simple geographic question? Sounds okay for now, but whose geography shall we use? The tectonic plate one or the soil chemist one or the hydrologist one? Multiple and correct answers do exist and are known, but unfortunately, they do not coincide with each other and the answers range all the way from Woodland as the start of our Capay Valley alluvial plain all the way back West towards our six communities, stopping here and there as an “answer” to a particular meaning of “Where’s the start of the Capay Valley?” Honest, there’s even a “Brooks!” answer (www.CacheCreek.com ). Something about the airflow being blocked there…

It turns out that multiple geographies do indeed coexist and that we must use different ones for different categories, leading to differing answers to the same question. But in which category is our simple question? Quandary. Quagmire? This whole scenario reminds me of the existence of Paris, France and Paris, Illinois and its next-door neighbor Paris, Indiana (I’m a native Hoosier.), not to mention all the other instances of Paris on the Earth! No one of these communities is like the others at all. Which answer are you really, really after? Is there a hidden agenda? Or is this an intriguing scientific pursuit destined to add to man’s knowledge of himself and his world? Why did we really, really ask this question in the first place? Fundamentally, given the human condition, perhaps an answer is not of interest at all. Perhaps the real interest is in the mild human chaos surrounding the process of finding an answer…hmmm. This entire question controversy reminds me of those ongoing urban legends which surface now and then (www.Snopes.com ), e.g.,
Trapping License (17 November 2005)
· Does California law require state residents to obtain hunting licenses before setting mousetraps?

However, we hope to see shortly if there exist methods which can aid in finding our actual answer. It’s time to conduct an examination from all sides. Also from on top and up from the bottom. Firstly, is the answer one word? Alternately to a single answer, is the answer to the question actually a debatable two-fold one, perhaps with theological overtones as in “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” (We are ignoring all those false 2-answer questions such as “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” or “Are the drunken rages over?”) Notice that not only two-location answers exist for a certainty, for I’ve already heard lot’s more than two without even looking very far or very deeply. At one meeting I sat through, someone said unhesitatingly “Capay!” Next, I heard “Esparto, of course.” Perhaps our sought-for answer is a non-stationery target, moving with flood levels. (See Weather Station #196—For username and password, use Esparto at www.cimis.water.ca.gov/cimis/frontLogonData.do ) Someone abruptly once said “Esparto’s not the start, it’s the Gateway to the Capay Valley.”

As an aside, this unfortunately reminds me of a famous related mathematical conundrum: “Does the set of all sets contain itself?” Can a place such as Esparto be simultaneously both a gateway to and inside of something? Duhhh…this is becoming disconcerting. How about objects with no start and no end? Remember the Klein bottle, a 3-D construct which has only a single two-dimensional surface, so that it’s inside is also the outside? (Picture a necked bottle with the extended neck’s end fused into a hole of the same size in the side of the bottle, with a flared opening lower in the neck.) And, to perhaps add intellectual insult to injury, did you ever as a kid build a Mobius surface wherein its top is a continuous part of its bottom, as it only has one surface in its pure world, not to mention only one edge. Both of these constructs have neither starting point nor an ending point. Not much help here…I think you’ll agree. (www.SciAm.com for the above and below.)
TODAY'S TRIVIA
What body part is affected by otitis externa?

We definitely should move on now, except for one final diversion to convince you that these types of pure constructs provide unanticipated insights.

Continuing this aside then, you can always approximate a Mobius surface by putting one twist only in a very narrow foot-long strip of paper and joining the two ends with some tape. (www.scidiv.bcc.ctc.edu/Math/Mobius.html --Strip named after August Ferdinand Möbius, a nineteenth century German mathematician and astronomer, who was a pioneer in the field of topology. Möbius, along with his better known contemporaries, Riemann, Lobachevsky and Bolyai, created a non-Euclidean revolution in geometry.) Do try making one. Next, try tracing your finger around the strip’s circumference without ever lifting it from the paper. Wonder of wonders, your finger starts out on top and, one round trip (or is it two?) later, your digit has traveled the bottom of the paper as well, which then becomes the top. Try two twists before taping your next strip for a delectable surprise indeed! And, for three twists… Now, back to the Capay Valley and its mysterious or, at least, elusive starting point.

About this instant in time in the search for a simple answer or two, I thought an expert opinion was needed. Someone who should definitely know is usually on duty there. The Esparto Post Office would know for sure. Simple! At the front counter, my answer came back loud and clear with no uncertainty: “Madison. It’s obvious since there are no more population clusters to the East.” The drama unfolds…now, with all my many answers in hand, ranging from Woodland to Capay via Madison and Esparto and even Brooks, I began to wonder what the Guinda Post Office would yield as an answer? Would it be new answer number n? It wouldn’t be Guinda, would it? Wonder what the official position of www.CapayValley.com is?

However, that nth answer would have to wait until my next trip up the Capay Valley. Because right now, another aspect of the question about the start location of the valley came to mind? Perhaps, as in the fabled Indian story of the blindfolded men who each felt a separate part of an elephant, an animal they knew not, and were asked to identify the whole entity, our answer might depend on which part of the question we are “feeling.” The man who felt only the flexible trunk thought one thing (Have forgotten what!), the one who felt a massive rigid wrinkled leg might have thought walnut tree (www.Walnuts.US ), and so forth all the way to the tail of the elephant. In short, perhaps there is no absolute answer whatsoever, only a relative one with which we must be content. Could it be that my “start” is not your “start?” Is there then no consensus “start?”

Consequently, with the elephant myth in mind, our new auxiliary, or helper, question concerning the latter part of the mental elephant now becomes: “Where’s the end of the Capay Valley?” Oh, oh. Multiple answers seem to emerge again! The first four volunteered were: “Simple, Rumsey!” “No, its Clear Lake caldera as it empties into Cache Creek which drains the Capay Valley.” Next answer was “The roughly U-shaped top of all ridge lines like Blue Ridge and hills such as Mt. Konocti as they all form the watershed of the valley. A final discouraging one: “No non-trivial meaning to ‘end of a valley’ exists.”

Disheartened, I tried another new side of the multi-faceted question by climbing up, figuratively and even laboriously, onto the top of the elephant. In fact, in my mental gedanken experiment, I hiked (www.yolohiker.org ) up to 3,000’ Berryessa Peak for a bird’s-eye view and then hopped further up onto the Space Station for a satellite’s-eye view. Fortunately, I know about three Russian words. “Zdrasty!”, I mumbled an approximation of “Hi!” to the pair of occupants. “Just exactly what is Capay Valley itself?” “Nyet, not Kamchatka, Capay!” In other words, where did the valley come from. How did it get here? What shaped it? Finally, it seemed I had almost unintentionally found a question with perhaps only, yes, an amazing single answer, albeit not all that short. Will wonders never cease! Da. The Cosmonauts showed me a book they sometimes keep onboard for casual off-duty reading. Fortuitously, they had this particular book in both languages as a courtesy to visiting Astronauts and drop-ins.

Their book was John McPhee’s 1993 “Assembling California” (www.yolocounty.org/org/library/electronic.htm ), which credits tectonic plate pioneer Eldridge Moores of UC-Davis with much of the credit for our long-sought valley entrance “answer” after his decades of tectonic research. Moores, who recently visited Guinda with a slide show to enlighten and entertain us, concludes that physical California is comprised of these exotic substances named below. And his answer, paraphrased, is…

We now scientifically conclude that California is primarily composed of Pacific Ocean bottom scrapings piled up over millennia and jammed onto the Western margin of the North American Plate. Said process extending our coast westward from its original Nevada location, as the adjoining Pacific Plate subducts under us in its roughly North-Northeastern motion over the molten magma covering out inner iron core. Zeroing in to our locality, just one of the long roughly North-South oriented puckers in these bottom scrapings is indeed our cherished Capay Valley. An inglorious unexpected birth indeed for such a wondrous place in which to live and work, full of fun people, vistas of promise, bounteous crops, wildlife and nature galore, and adventures ahead! Even wild pigs. Our beloved valley is indeed at its essence a blossoming of bottom scrapings! What would our 6-community Chamber of Commerce (www.EspartoChamber.com ) say about that?

We should right now return full-circle to say “Hey! What about the answer to the original question?” My tentative response, with the space station view in mind, is that I finally did find at least my own personal answer. Until further, possibly never, examination of additional of the 20+ sides of “Where’s the start of the Capay Valley?”, this “pucker end” is a totally convincing solution for me. The long form answer to “Start?” is thus: “Around here! It’s somewhere by the downstream end of the Cache Creek wrinkle in the pucker of the skin of the old scrapings of the Pacific Ocean plate.” That’s enough for me, not only right now but perhaps forever. Turns out that it’s a really simple straightforward answer, after all. Finally, my own single sentence answer is: “Here at home near our special wrinkle in the local pucker of my planet.” That is indeed where my private Capay Valley starts. How about yours…?


Recipe:

Well-formed green English walnut leaves from the Capay Valley, especially if picked somewhere near July 4 before they begin degrading, make an excellent flavored/fortified wine, a half-gallon of which requires only a pound of freshly-picked leaves, air-dried in the shade for 4 days or so.

Walnut Leaves Wine:
Ingredients
1 lb air-dried walnut leaflets, color intact (from shade drying)
750 ml of select brandy
2 standard-size 750 ml bottles of red wine of your choice
1/2 lb granulated sugar

Procedure
Hand-crumble the walnut leaflets after tearing or snipping them off from the stems on the walnut leaf. (Dry leaflets an extra day or two if they are not crumbling easily. Provide yourself only the 5 largest leaflets on each compound walnut leaf, leaving attached to the tree the rest of the leaf with the two or four smallest leaflets on the large stem.) Pour the brandy over the leaflets and stir gently for several minutes. If desired, machine process the granulated sugar for a couple of minutes so that it is superfine (called caster or castor sugar), but not as fine as confectionery sugar. This aids in dissolving it. Add sugar. Add the wine and give a gentle stir for a minute or two. Loosely cover the container and store outdoors in the shade for 6-8 weeks, stirring once or twice a week. Finally, filter the mixture, perhaps cheese cloth first, followed by a paper coffee filter, and then bottle. Drink immediately or age further.

Reflection:

Valley:
Start, finish; third, fourth; next, second from last; beginning, end; hence start, end.

Copyright © 2005 Jim Haag

“Ramblings…” to come: “What’s up in the sky?” Based on Morrison Planetarium’s 11/19/05 teaser: “As the red planet Mars rises in the east after sunset, below and to the right are the faint stars of Cetus the Sea Monster, containing Tau Ceti, a star that was once scanned for intelligent radio signals.”