A Sense of Place, and the Waters Flowing Therefrom

As a propagation group member, I volunteer at the CNPS plant sale up at the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum, and on my way up there for the fabulous sale yesterday, I listened to a podcast of a recent episode of the excellent NPR show, To The Best Of Our Knowledge. The theme and title was "Sense of Place" - one segment in particular really gave me food for thought.

It was about this book: Jerry Apps, Old Farm: A History (Wisconsin Historical Society Press). Mr Apps has written the "deep history" of his place, which was homesteaded by a civil war veteran, and before that was occupied by native Americans whose tribe I forget.

I want to understand the deep history of this place where I live, the ecology, and the botany especially. There are many local information resources, but I don't have the time to get out and take advantage of them. Little by little, I guess.

I'm not talking about new or original research, just pulling together information specific to right here. It would give me satisfaction.

At the sale, I chatted to Fred, a knowledgeable CNPS member, and Deanna, who works in Acterra's stewardship program and does all the things I would also love to do - propagates from local natives for restoration projects and so on. Town Mouse took one of her workshops not long ago.

The topic of watersheds came up, and the importance of planting natives that originate in the same watershed that you live in.

I'm not quite clear about this link between plants and watersheds, and I can't find any info on the web so far. I'll have to talk to Fred again about why exactly this is so important.

Again I realized I don't know my watershed. I tried once and failed: I couldn't determine from this map available on the web - Am I in the San Lorenzo watershed, the biggest one in Santa Cruz County, or the Soquel Creek watershed, just south of it? Here is a bit of the map, whose source you can find by clicking the link above.


Upon close inspection and this time comparing the above map with a Google Maps view of the same locale, I have now determined that our south slope lies in the Soquel Creek watershed, and our north slope lies in the San Lorenzo river watershed! (We live somewhere on the line to the right of the words "Scotts Valley." )

What a unique position, to be sitting on a ridge on the dividing line between two watersheds! If I were a character in a novel, living on such a dividing line would mean something.

Another small but important facet in a slowly developing sense of one particular place on the globe.