Friends of Gualala River Protecting the Gualala River watershed and the species living within it
A sonnet, included in a
letter to the Editor, published in the
Independent Coast Observer
November 30, 2018
And were you there two hundred years ago,
small green island set in wide mouth of our
Gualala River that now is shallow and slow?
“No,” answer those slim young redwoods that tower
above its banks. “This river then was mighty,
a swirling mass of blue that rushed by high
and swift under great grandfather trees, their flighty
green needles flicked by wind. Nothing compared
to that white water crashing everywhere,
water filled with huge silver salmon who dared
surge upriver, splashing and spawning there.”
Our river, our redwoods, our salmon, we’ll fight to restore
your beauty as immense, majestic and wild as before.
Ellen Rosser
Point Arena, CA
See also:
Help the River,
– the letter which this sonnet accompanied.
