Notes from the Field

Each month, our staff and Board members reflect on the changing of the seasons, advances in our work, and why our mission matters. January's post is from our Deputy Director for Conservation, Abigail Whittaker.

I'm remembering a balmy day in late September, fading into a golden haze. From the basalt shelf at the lip of the canyon, the cloud of dragonflies flitting over the tree tops below glints as the sun hits their wings, like fireflies of the day. The sound of the creek rushing through the gorge rises softly on the wind, whispering through the tops of the California bay and live oak trees that cling tenaciously to clefts in the boulders. Here, Nature has cloaked every slope and pocket of soil with roots and leaves and unseen blooms and teeming subterranean life. It’s a landscape that has endured and will endure, has adapted and will adapt, heedless of whether hikers and bikes that wind along the canyon rim pause to look in. We are just visitors here, ephemeral nomads in a place where wind and water etch their way toward the core of the planet, inch by inch, year by year, century by century.

The savage and glorious wildness of this place persists through the foresight and legacy of Annie Bidwell, whose views on open space preservation and the dangers of unfettered development were prescient. The year 2020 marked the 115th anniversary of her original bequest of 2,500 acres of public land to the community of Rancho Chico—a bequest that has since grown to 3,670 acres through subsequent acquisitions. Her gift became Bidwell Park, one of the largest municipal open space parks in the nation, and it inspires us to consider what legacy we want to leave to generations who will live in the Sacramento River valley and foothills 115 years after us.

Untamed landscapes, free-flowing waterways, expansive tracts preserving the region’s rich farming and ranching heritage, the knowledge that our children will have a chance to continue living this lifestyle under wide open skies... these are the gifts that will continue to give long into the future. And this is the heartbeat of the Northern California Regional Land Trust. Our organization exists to work alongside landowners and communities to leave a legacy of open spaces and wild places for the North State of the future.