From the delta to the sea - at elliott fouts gallery, july 2022
A droplet of water hangs in the clouds above the Sacramento Delta. The droplet falls on an orchard and its journey begins. It drains to a slough, merges with the river, widens into the Suisun Bay, the San Pablo Bay, the San Francisco Bay, and tumbles into the Pacific Ocean. It washes on the shore, then surges out to the deep toward the horizon, into a great expanse.
10,000 years ago, what we now call the Sacramento River did not flow into a bay. It remained a river, flowing through a deep canyon reaching the Pacific Ocean where the Farallon Islands are today. Traveling along the delta toward the ocean is both a spatial journey, and a journey through time. Each transition in the landscape signifies a different passage. The Bay was once not a bay, the edge of the ocean was once an inland forest, sand was solid rock. Water flowing, second after second, minute by minute, day by day, year after year.
Each water droplet makes little impact on the landscape, but the accumulation forms an estuary that sustains life. It is a rest stop for migratory birds, spawning ground for fish, even the mud heaves and contracts with millions of living organisms.
As I stand at the edge of the ocean painting, the Farallon islands are a faint speck on the horizon, 30 miles out to sea. I consider that my life has parallels with each individual droplet of water. I only take one trip down the river. While by some accounts I am still a young man, to my astonishment I am approaching middle age, and this landscape will change very little in my lifetime. On a geologic scale my time here is a moment. Like a single droplet, I make no discernible impact, but as water carves rock, the ocean moves.
Birds hover over the bay, fish swim upstream, an artist paints, and water flows from the delta to the sea. These paintings are my sediment deposit along the banks before I plunge into the deep toward a horizon that I cannot see past, into a great expanse.
