March 26, 2025
At a sunset in spring, from an 11-mile ridgeline east of Clear Lake, a hiker today can see the country as did the Patwin, Pomo, Wappo, and Miwok peoples, who walked it for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. A red-orange sky blazes above blue-green serpentinite boulders; Mount Shasta looms to the north. Golden and bald eagles and red-tailed hawks soar overhead where condors once did. Delicate, purple-petaled adobe lilies bloom in wildflower-strewn meadows, alongside hillside chaparral dotted with gray pines and uncommon McNab cypresses. Groundwater springs to the surface in the dry terrain—some hot, sulfurous, and filled with the larvae of an endemic brine fly; elsewhere with enough carbonation to tickle a tongue. This is Molok Luyuk—“Condor Ridge,” in the Patwin language—a new addition to Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument.