Rivenrock Gardens Cactus Blog… go to www.rivenrock.com for edible cactus

   My family is mixed European and some Native American. My father’s family came from the The British Isles in the mid sixteen hundreds. As they moved through the country they often married into the local Cherokee families in the Carolinas where they settled, as well as into other Euro families recently arrived… As the centuries progressed they fought in the various wars on this continent (Euros always say we’ve never fought wars in our own country) including the Revolutionary War (there was a fifteen year-old John Dicus who was a drummer boy in a regiment and got killed by a musket ball hit in the leg).

   As the generations came and went, the oldest son would often inherit the family farm… the other young men of the family had to leave and work their way west, often to find a stream and timber where they would install a water-wheel and cut lumber. The name Dicus is from the Dutch (Dyke House), they were millers in Holland, imported to England in the fifteen hundreds for their technical knowledge of waterworks, and then exported to the colonies to help build the New World.

   Generation after generation, the inexorable westward movement continued, always a generation behind the original settlers… no one needs a grain mill or sawmill before the land has been cleared and the first crops coming out of the ground in sufficient quantity to require a big machine to grind it… nor could they pay to have timber sawn into boards until they had a crop to sell.

   I study history… I accept that this country was conquered in a mixture of bargaining and bloodshed.  I know of no country that was not founded in such a way.  And just as my family moved west to take new land… so to did many of the tribes try to move west to make room….. this pushed them into the territory of other tribes with the inter-tribal conflicts that would be the inevitable result.. weakening both tribes and leaving them both as easy pickings for the European interlopers.

   People who disparage the land grabbing Euros tend to overlook the land grabbing and wars the tribes were constantly involved in. If the original tribes of Natives had allied themselves, tossing aside their generational conflicts and hatred, they would have been able to repel the sparse boatloads of Europeans. But some of the tribes were often interested in allying themselves with the pale skinned strangers with horses and firearms… these would be a handy ally to have in their own tribal wars.   The fractures between the tribes allowed the Europeans to come here in large numbers until they were unstoppable.

   Yet on the other hand, from my mother I have a different heritage. Not one of conquest and endless taking…. but one of running from conflict and disease.  The walled cities of Central Europe is where her family came from.  Places where people stayed holed up in a small town with the fields outside the walls, never to go beyond the valley of their birth since beyond the walls were strange people with virulent diseases…. armed to the teeth… private armies set to pillage…. it was better to stay holed up in your walled city.. until plague hit. then you must leave now!

   It was there that the old saying ‘The weak give up and stay…the strong give up and leave’.  A plague hit in the early 1700′s in a portion of the Hungarian Empire. Our family built a raft and floated from the Black Forest down the Danube River (Donau) to Budapest where they were given the farm of a family that died from plague. They lived there for over two hundred years, prospering… until the Soviets took the family farm over.  This is when my grandmother (much of the family had already been killed or imprisoned) packed her young daughter up and ran through the forest until she found a train chugging slowly that she was able to get onto and be taken to freedom in the West.

   When we’re faced with a dire attack upon our person, land or way of life… we generally have several options.  We can sell if able and move on… or we can stay, either to prevail through the fight or to perish in the flames of battle.  Either choice gives us an uncertain future.

   In the particular instance in my life…. we face a housing development by a multi millionaire who wishes to make a few million more, at the probable expense of a few score of families in the immediate area. If this plan does go through, it is inevitable that at one time or another, we’ll start to see our local wells go dry, and the value of our properties will plummet precipitously.  In a decade or two, it might be that we’ll have no personal water use at all. Any water we use will have to be trucked in… this will mean the end of any landscaping, horses or crops in the canyon.  And we won’t have the Peace Corps coming in here to help us out. In this country if you own property you are expected to hold it yourself, or lose it. That is what has made us such a dynamic society…. due to our system, weak areas do not cause a drain on the system… they perish. Our occasional recessions force weak companies off the books, and when the economy improves, only the strong, well-run and efficient companies are left.

   Based on history,  I can sell now (in this depressed market), or I can fight the development.  If the development goes through, while there is the possibility of some work helping build houses and landscapes… the history of the property owner is to use immigrant labor as it is cheaper for him. Likely I’d not be getting any of the hoped-for landscape and building work…. and will in the end have a dry well, while the multi millionaire has three hundred new homes and a hotel to further enrich his coffers.

   If I stay and fight, and win… I will have what I have already, nothing more… but I will still have it.

   The situation between my ancestors and myself has changed a lot… I am living in a democratic country that does not automatically give latitude to the rich with their teams of lawyers.  The development is not sustainable on a long term basis. That’s just too much water being pumped from the ground there. We have the resources of law, precedent and the people behind us to help. We are getting together with different groups all over to help fight this land development.  We’ve started a web-page www.lostberros.org to help spread information amongst ourselves and publicize our plight.  

   For the most part the people of the canyon are united in opposition to this development…. however we do have a few people who feel that intruding upon any one’s use of their property is anathema. Yes, property rights are a big ‘hot-button’ topic here.  Here is a letter we got from one of the neighbors who prefersto let the millionaire build… I mean… all this land was taken from others by people in the past… perhaps it’s just inevitable it be taken from us now by another…. here’s his letter.

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500 years ago, the native Americans didn’t want to see the conquistadors
moving to California.

In 1849, the ancestors of the American Indians and conquistadors didn’t want
to see the 49ers.

In the 1930′s, the ancestors of the American Indians, conquistadors, and
49ers weren’t very happy about the Okies immigrating to California. 

In the 1980′s, local residents of San Luis Obispo, descendants of American
Indians, conquistadors, 49ers, Okies, and others  were upset about the local
college students like me moving into rental housing in their traditional
family neighborhoods. 

Nobody ever wants to see someone develop around their neighborhood and be
forced to share resources.  Fortunately for those of us Californians that
aren’t 100% California American Indians ancestry, previous generations have
not been very effective and limiting development. 

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  Well, for sure all those things are true.  But there is a major problem with this thinking…. in this case the new wells, and the fact that we’ll have a five-fold increase in numbersof households taking water from the shale rock… the water will dry out higher up the canyon first, while the new people will still have water for a time.   It is not ‘sharing of resources he mentions… but taking 100% in time. ALL of our water will be gone, not just ‘sharing’. And that is why I am feeling like my back is against the wall now. I have to either sell now and get out of this area…. or I can stay here and eventually wither away like a grape leaf in December… unless that is; the development is not approved by the county.  If we of the canyon act like the Native American tribes, and squabble among ourselves while the enemy approaches… we will be just like those peoples who lost out to newcomers. 

   I have a feeling that we can fight and defeat this development. We have to come together for this.  We need to provide a united front.  Just because people in the past had to move over to allow others in… does that mean that we must also move and allow the millionaire to take our water?

   No, I choose to fight this development, I won’t sit idly by and allow some millionaire to sell three hundred houses and build  a hotel on property that does not have the water for it, taking the water from us while he enriches himself.

  Sure, my own family always drummed into me the old adage ”The weak give up and stay…the strong give up and leave”.  But that was from a time when my family could build a raft and drift down the river until you got to a place where they gave you land to help develop the country…. but now there is no other place to go.  This is where I’m digging my heels in…. and I’m going to pull my weight…. with the majority of my neighbors and defeat this unsustainable land development.