Very nice article about one of our region’s natural treasures.
Cosumnes River Preserve a slice of 1807 California
Paul McHugh, Chronicle Outdoors Writer
Thursday, May 17, 2007
California's sumptuous countryside is jam-packed with options for pulse-pounding adventure. The Cosumnes River Preserve isn't one of them. Not unless a tranquil tour through a freshwater marsh, home to a gaggle of creeping, crawling, flapping and flying wildlife, is the sort of thing that truly lights your candle.
The preserve, located about 20 miles south of Sacramento, is easy to whiz right past on Interstate 5, unless you happen to be scouting for it. Take the time to make the turn onto Twin Cities Road between Walnut Grove and Galt, though, and you'll soon encounter a slice of the great Central Valley as it was two centuries ago.
Launched by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and other government agency and nonprofit partners with an initial area of 1,480 acres in 1987, this preserve now sprawls across more than 46,000 acres. Bracketing the lower Cosumnes River -- the last undammed river among those that drain the Sierra's west slope -- the preserve celebrates and nurtures the type of lush, riparian forests and lazy, meandering river sloughs once common throughout the center of our state.
Now, less than 5 percent of that type of habitat remains.
"I see this place as my wild backyard. I've come out here for 14 years," Bill Van der Ven said. "It's a remnant from when this part of California held a vast, inland sea. There's towering valley oaks, cypress, cottonwoods and willows. There's neat stuff to see like families of river otters and beaver lodges. I just love this place, it's awesome. And I haven't even explored it all yet."
Van der Ven, 59, said he coped with his midlife crisis 15 years ago by buying a canoe, not a sports car. Still, his canoe does seem like a sports car. It's a rare, We No Nah "Stealth" model, striped with light carbon fiber and set up for a solo paddler. Besides working as a guide for the Current Adventures paddling school, he's also the author of a half-dozen guidebooks to recreational paddling sites up and down California. So when Van der Ven says a place is special enough to keep drawing him back, that means something.
