Category: San Gabriel Mountains National Monument
By Miguel Lizarraga
Returning to the moving waters where my father first introduced me to the art of fly fishing three decades ago feels like a journey through time, each ripple on the surface a memory stirred.
What once was a simple father-son outing has now transformed into a pilgrimage of sorts, as I witness the fruits of nature’s labor. In the tranquil stream where my father patiently taught me to cast my line without snatching a tree limb above me, wild trout still spawn.
Not fires, pollution, and other of nature’s wrath can stop these fish. Even though graffiti and trash may still paint the picture, the trout are doing their part. It’s time that we do ours.
It’s worse than being on the bad side of Santa’s naughty or nice ledger: the San Gabriel National Monument has joined the travel magazine Fodor’s “No List 2024.”
Sites land on the list for several reasons. For example, of the nine “winners” this year, Venice bellyflopped because of over-tourism. This is nothing new, but, as the mag says a five Euro tourism fee is likely to do little to curb the tourists-to-residents ratio that landed the beautiful city on the list last year and in 2018. It joins Athen and Mt. Fuji in this category.
Then there’s the “water quality and sufficiency” category that includes Lake Superior, the Ganges and Koh Samui, Thailand. Lots to write about here, but it’s too depressing to pen. You can read about it >>HERE.
Then finally the USA makes the list in “trash production,” along with Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, and Chile’s Atacama Desert.
Up until this point, Californians could be rightly proud of the many lists our state treasures have been included in, such as the National Geographic National Parks Road Trip, which features the Redwood National and State parks. Now?
Public outcry is the only way to save this beautiful area we all love. Get vocal. Get loud. This land truly is “our land,” as the song says, “this land was made for you and me.”
See you on the river, Jim Burns
We Southern California steam fly fishers are a unique lot. If you’re reading this, you must love overcoming obstacles. After all, for a modest investment in an 8 weight, a decent waterproof reel, working on a longer cast and a sinking line, there’s the Pacific Ocean right in front of you, with its siren call of corbina runs, maybe a halibut and, for sure, a perch. (Just don’t bonk any beach joggers on the head when they absentmindedly walk into your back cast. That can lead to therapy — for both of you!)
Yet, here you are wandering the San Gabriel National Monument, doing the Curtis Creek sneak behind JPL, pondering a long drive to Deep Creek or scouting Piru Creek to the west. I mean, what’s with you?
Your friends up north, think you must be a bit daffy to get excited by a hand-size catch that takes a full-size outing to snag, or stiffle a chuckle when you tell them about the three (count them, three) fish passages in various stages of planning on the LA River.
They want to chase steelhead, dammit, on the Klamath or the Trinity; or bow a spey rod lifting a massive Lahontan Cutty at Pyramid Lake, or shiver through a UFO encounter and a fighting ‘bo on the Nature Conservancy water of the McCloud.
The very fact we have a lot of water that can or might hold wild trout right here in dry, hot Southern California thrills you. You wonder if your ancient Orvis 2 wt. might work well as a Euro rod? Contemplate getting up at dark thirty, just to explore another skinny water and see if it holds trout. Wonder if that was actually a Trico on your windshield and then dream about how the stubborn finny friends who have survived, dams, drought, fire and trash, trash, trash might react to one on 7x tippet? Good lord, those little fellas could hold the genetic makeup of the endangered Southern California Steelhead!
Well, what can I say, I’m right there with you. We are both giddy optimists! I love exploring what we have here in So Cali. And, finally, at long last, tomorrow is opening day on the West Fork of the San Gabriel River. After so, so long being closed during weekdays for a Public Works rehab of the water and riparian habitat conflagrated by the Bobcat Fire, it’s back.
Oh, just don’t mention that part about the UFOs in Dunsmuir. It’s secret.
See you on the river, Jim Burns
Only the truly optimistic So Cal stream fly fisher dreams of crossing a graffiti scarred footbridge to find paradise. (Credit Jim Burns)
 | Derek Paul Flor just commented |
Way back in the day, some 1,200 years ago, an eccentric hermit and poet used to wander the mountains of eastern China’s Tiantai Mountains, and scratch his “songs” on the leaves of bushes, in the bark of trees and on the sides of caves. Think graffiti, but with a heart. Han Shan’s name (Cold Mountain in English) first appeared on our shores when Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac dedicated his delicious, infuriating and hugely successful 1958 novel, “The Dharma Bums” to him.
The book revolves around the semi-fictional relationship between Kerouac and Pulitzer-prize winning poet Gary Snyder as they mountaineer, drink, preach Zen, hike, carouse, drink, wallow and generally have a great time learning from each other. Snyder, one of the most influential Beat poets, translated and published Han Shan for the first time in English, while studying at UC Berkeley that same year.
With this as backstory, I must also add none of this was on my radar until reading about the connections between Han Shan, what we now call graffiti and the wilderness from a story by Bob Romano in the excellent UK mag, Fly Culture. Han Shan’s poems made Romero think minimalist in gear and fly box as he pursued Maine’s troutiful bounty.
Consider:
Thatch on rafters, I live in the wilds.
Carts and horses that pass here are few.
The grove is quiet, a place birds flock:
The creek is deep, so fish wait there.
There are wild fruits the boy and I can pick,
hard rocky fields the wife and I will hoe.
And in the house, what else?
Just a single shelf of books.
Can you imagine coming upon this poem on the West Fork? To read something on tree bark, or the side of a cliff that inspires you? Today’s graffiti in our wild places is ugly and sad. It leads to a sense of lawlessness, neglect, the opposite of the way I want to feel in the wild. No inspiration, no imagination, just a big, old nasty, “I was here” image that pollutes the mind, poisons the environment and makes you wonder what the hell is wrong with humanity.
For this story, I contacted multiple agencies to discover their federal and local graffiti policies, and how it is removed from our Monument: the Forest Service, at the local and national level, Public Works, the Conservation Corps, Representative Judy Chu, it was a long list, with nary a substantive response. All I can say is I’m disappointed in the complete lack of transparency from these elected officials and agencies. Meanwhile, when I pass by The Ledge next time I’m going fishing, I’ll think of Han Shan’s beautiful words, not the graffiti no one in authority bothers to take down.
For the two images below, both from the East Fork, the one on the left is the angler fishing box, an integral part of the communication covenant between anglers and the Forest Service. Ranger Ken Low of the National Parks Service said by email, “For the signs, I would try the World’s Best Graffiti Removal Products’s Safewipes. They come in a package with a cloth. Wear a nitrile glove to be safe. For the wayside panel with nothing on it, I would get some matching paint (brown) and repaint over all the graffiti.”
Unfortunately, the National Park Service has no affiliation with our beloved national monument. My question: If the NPS has a simple solution to this awful problem, why doesn’t the agency in charge of the monument, the Forest Service?
See you on the river, Jim Burns
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Steve
One of the unintended consequences of environmental regulation is that graffiti removal – or even graffiti coverup with a neutral coating – in the riparian area requires an environmental review and permit, due to concerns of paint or paint removal/covering contaminants eventually making their way into the river. Years ago, a gas-powered pressure washer was donated to the Forest Service. It sits unused for this reason.
So an ‘approved’ (employees contractors or formal volunteers) removal project just takes too long to process before the next graffiti comes along and it starts all over again.
The Forest Service can probably never go on record saying this, but I suspect they would not shed tears if some sneaky do-gooders just came in and removed or covered the graffiti on their own, as long as they didn’t get caught. It’s a forgiveness-vs-permission thing.
lariverflyfishing 