California Sketches

West of Hazel Avenue, a hazy warm morning makes for perfect canoeing. In the shelter of Sailor Bar, the water is mirror smooth. The canoe glides silently over weary salmon and cobbles worn smooth. From the bow, the main channel looks wide, daunting, fast and rough. The paddler looks ahead, reading the language of the river. On the surface, ominous raised pillow shapes indicate vertical currents below, while eddies threaten the unwary. Haystacks of angry water indicate hard, shallow objects. The river slaps against the canoe. The paddler looks for a funnel shape in the river and heads for the deepest part of the "V," the safest passage.

Soaring steel beams and curved surfaces of wood and glass define Sacramento's new international airport terminal. Expressed in this vast, light-filled and transparent space is a narrative about the spirit of this land, a flat, richly patterned landscape bordered by two mountain ranges.

Poised at the edge of the new Bay Bridge, 150 feet above water, I stand suspended on a temporary platform – awestruck. Looking west, across a 370-foot gap, another section emerges from Yerba Buena Island. Like the Transcontinental Railroad that linked America, the new Bay Bridge construction materializes from opposite shores.

Alcatraz from the inside provides a stark contrast to the outside, though not as you'd expect.

On a farm near Winters, an almond orchard lies in destruction. Fragments of branches and tree trunks are piled up like gravestones in a cemetery – a monument to each tree. In the midst of the field stand a farmworker and a backhoe.