When it comes to water Californians have attempted to have it all. We want a long dry season of mild temperatures under cloudless skies. We want parks and landscaping that looks like an English country estate. We want fisheries and a scenic natural environment and agriculture that puts food on the table at a reasonable price. Keeping all those balls in the air is becoming an increasingly impossible task.
Much of California is an environment that is clearly set off from its neighbors much less from the eastern part of the country. Its climate and geology is fundamentally different and it has many species of animals and plants that are found nowhere else in the world. This diary will look at the forces of nature that created such an unusual place.
The effort to preserve wild and scenic rivers in California and elsewhere has been a major environmental battle for many years. In California the Smith River which drains the northwest corner of the Klamath Mountains is the only river that has entirely escaped being dammed. It really is wild and very scenic.