Rushin’ Around the Russian River

Rushin’ Around the Russian River

A few years ago, Kim and I joined our friends Gary and Oswaldo on the perfunctory Alaska Cruise for a week. We went up to the Glaciers that make for the scattering of islands where Sitka and Ketchikan are located. One of the things all Alaska Cruise tourists see is the influence of Russia on the 50th state. The Russian Tsars pushed eastward across the North Pacific as early as the Sixteenth Century and went into full swing in the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries. It was in 1867 that “Seward’s Folly” caused the United States to buy Alaska from Russian for $7.2 million, less than half of what was paid for the Louisiana Purchase fifty years earlier. The Russians had been working the fur trade all along the Pacific Northwest from Alaska down to Northern California. My deal-making imagination wonders why the Russians sold for so little. I suspect that the cause may have been the Republic of California formation, twenty years before in 1846 when for a grand total of twenty-five days, a Republic was formed with its capital in what is now Sonoma County, California. This independence action was against the Mexican government and was a precursor to the Mexican-American War which began with the annexation of Texas the year before, but occurred over two years ending in 1848. The Russians had established a presence in Sonoma at one of the few spots on the rugged coast where they could harbor to transport supplies in and furs out. That spot was Fort Ross, just north of Bodega Bay. The Russians had edged their way down there from Sitka in 1812, while the Young United States were busy on the East Coast fighting off the British again. For more than thirty years, Fort Toss and the surrounding areas was being stripped of fur pelts by the Russian-American Company since they had stripped Siberia and started that same process on the Alaskan Coast.

The history of Sonoma County is much richer than I had realized. As Kim and I headed out from the Sonoma home of our friends Frank and Lydia, they in their car and us in ours, I had the benefit of Frank’s local historical knowledge thanks to having brought along walkie talkies to communicate car-to-car easily. We learned about the Vallejo Ranch of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who as a leading Californio, took full advantage of the exiting Russians at Fort Ross and owned a classically massive tract of land that is now the bulk of the geographically large Sonoma County. After driving through what had been Vallejo’s ranch, we crossed back and forth across the Russian River as we headed to Fort Ross. The State Park there was open, the Fort compound was open, but the Fort itself was closed due to Coronavirus. Presumably that was to maintain proper social distancing, which we are all in favor of. I figure we saw 97% of what Fort Ross has to offer. That was especially so since we saw the 200-year-old Eucalyptus tree just outside the Fort that we know was planted by the Russians since it is not indigenous (it was brought from Australia). It is said to be the oldest and largest Eucalyptus Tree in Northern California. Given its immense twenty-foot diameter trunk, this seems an impressive piece of trivia.

Our next planned stop was for lunch in Mendocino. For a town that is little more than a wide spot in the road, it’s a town that sticks in my head due to the song by that name that was sung by Sir Douglas Quintet and used in my high school favorite, Easy Rider. To put it bluntly, Mendocino was a drug song, which stands to reason since this remote northern part of California has been a grow center for weed for many years. We continued north into the Redwood forests that lead up the coast to Eureka and Arcata. We had heard a lot about Arcata over the years since Kim’s nephews both went to Cal State Humboldt in Arcata. We were directed to the Arcata Hotel, which looks like it should be in an episode of Bonanza in Carson City. It sits on the town square, which is heavily populated with homeless hippies. We dared venture a block to a patio restaurant. On the way we passed four empty storefronts, two bars and two CBD medical marijuana stores. The walk made it clear we were in a Northern California college town.

The Russian history of this quirky part of the country adds a poignancy to the news that Donald Trust continues to lie about the likelihood of the Russians having paid bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The day that Trump announces that he will serve Vladimir Putin’s objectives vis-a-vis NATO by sending 12,500 troops home from Germany. The day that Trump continues to suggest that mail-in ballots will delegitimize our election, also serving the dismantling of democratic processes per the Russian game plan Part Deux. The day that Trump suggested by tweet that it might be best for the U.S. to postpone the November 3rd Presidential election (which has been met with astonishment and disapproval from both sides of the aisle).

We got the best of Russia in the Nineteenth Century and Russia is getting the better of us in the Twenty-first Century. Polk and Seward must be turning over in their graves to see what Donald Trump has brought America to at the Russian negotiating table. We are listening through the Redwoods to Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough on Audible. It does an ear-popping job of explaining how the universe has created the damaged and dangerous psyche of Donald Trump. We have a few more chapters to get through and miles of Redwoods between here and Coos Bay to get us through it all. I need the grandeur of nature as exhibited in the Redwoods to remind me that this Trump phenom is but an aberration, a full-blown case of abnormal psychology and that it is not indicative of life as we will continue to know it. Even the Russian River eventually ran dry for the Russians just as the Trump stream of aberrant behavior will run dry soon.