California's Mother Lode country was Indian tribal territory at the beginning of 1848. Even before the discovery of gold, it was an up and down land that stretched some 120 miles by air, give or take an extra mile or more. But by following the up and down contour of the land, by dropping in and out of gulches and canyons on winding trails, the distance grew like a great snake crossing the land. And what could have been an easy journey became one that stretched about 250 up and down miles and took more than a few days to complete.
Not high in altitude, the Mother Lode ranges from just below 1,000 feet to just above 3,000 feet above sea level. It is a country cut through by such rivers as the Yuba, American, Cosumnes, Mokelumne, Calaveras, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, and Merced. But these are the major rivers, and they have tributaries that are almost dry creeks in the summer, but run with a rush of wild, white water when the snow pack in the High Sierra melts during late spring and early summer.
Red clay soil marks the Mother Lode with its color. Below these Sierra Nevada foothills The rich solid of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys have the color of Sandy loam in some areas and the rich, black peat in the Delta country below Stockton. High above the Mother Lode is the land of granite that shines in the sunlight like great white whales breeching above the surface of an ocean of pines and firs.
In this land where rives have their beginning, where gold once washed down canyons to the red clay country, there are aspens, cottonwoods, dogwoods, sugar pines, ponderosas, firs, and junipers that cling to granite outcroppings and take all the buffeting of winter gales and howling blizzards and suffer scars from lightning that had split a limb or left a raw burn as a reminder of a violent visit. The droppings from all these trees and the loose soil come together and wash down mountainsides to catch in pockets formed by massive boulders or continue in a muddy journey in rivers and creeks that carry the loose soil to the low county.
But the Mother Lode's true character can be found in its red clay soil, the bullpines, the poison oak, the buck brush, the wild blackberry vines, the white and black oaks, and the blaze of color that comes alive each spring as Johnny-jump-ups, poppies, larkspurs, cream cups, and a myriad of other brightly colored wild flowers live out their short lives and bring the green hillsides and fields alive for the few weeks of spring.
In this red clay land, the winters are wet, cold, and long; and the summers are remembered for months of heat that last from June to the end of September or even the beginning of October. Temperatures range from a low of eighty degrees in the night to well over a hundred degrees during the midday. Then fall comes as the poison oak leaves turn a brilliant red, but even before the end of November, winter returns as the first storms come in on a Pacific wind. Dark thunderheads gather, lightning strikes, and the sound of thunder rolls throughout the canyons and gulches like a sudden beating on a gathering of great drums. The rain alternates between a steady patter and a rushing waterfall flow. The earth soaks; the last of the dry and dead-looking grass on flat areas gives way and leaves open patches like the skin of a balding head; and the overflow of water runs into creeks that join rivers that flood toward the high-water marks in the deep
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