Lake Bottom
The Lake,
a non-existent, shallow estuary
with miles of Tule reeds,
and uncountable populations
waterfowl and aquatic life.
The Lake, a huge plain
of cultivated fields
is how certain people
of the Southern San Joaquin Valley
refer to the empty space
laying before them,
even though a body of water
75-miles long,
and 25-miles wide,
hasn't appeared
in over one-hundred years.
Albeit invisible
and omnipresent
within the extended shores,
the lowest elevation
in the Tulare Lake bottom,
somewhere south of Stratford,
is in a trough,
inside an extinct lake
in a valley between the Coast Range,
and foothills of the Sierra’s.
One hundred eighty-seven point one
feet above sea level,
The lowest part of a valley
where rain that falls within it
never flows out, instead dries up
during the prolonged drought.
Wet years ebbing and flowing
with melted snow
in a contested quest for the sea.
In 1862, the lake bottom
was 47 feet at its deepest,
where floodwaters once collected
on over 486,000 acres,
then mostly planted to wheat.
If you were to stand at the center
of the absolute lowest place
in the lake bed, the land
would be the same elevation
for ten miles in all directions.
The greatest attraction, the lowest land
draws all water to it,
lives here in the long-dead lake.
Farmland in agribusiness grids
of service roads,
canals, and side-ditches.
Levees forty-feet high
turn run-off water away
from the siren-call of gravity.
Author: Stephen Barile
On OMPJ
Photo: Matt Hardy on Unsplash
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