Damn I've lost some weight.
I was born and raised a half-hour north of Truckee in the Sierra Valley. My family, Dotta, was one of the first European families to settle there, along with several other families from the Ticino canton of Switzerland, including the Martinetti's, Roberti's, Fillipini's, Vanetti's, Madalena's, and Genasci's. Before us, the Maidu and Washoe Indians hunted and fished in the Valley. I'm 4th generation in the Valley, and I'm proud to say I know the routes my Great Grandparents took from Switzerland, only to cross paths in Vinton, and create my lineage.
My Great Grandfather, Lodovico Dotta, a native of Ticino, took a ship across the Atlantic to Panama and road a donkey across the Isthmus of Panama in the early days of the Gold Rush. He took a steam ship to San Francisco and worked in a dairy, saving his money to open up a supply store for the Gold Rushers. He made a killing, and made his way to Sierra Valley. I can't imagine what California looked like in his day, millions of salmon and steelhead making their way up river next to him as he ascended the Sierra Nevada range.
He bought a large piece of land that encompassed most of the north eastern Sierra Valley, and included the land that's flooded by Frenchman's Reservoir.
He owned and operated the train station in Vinton as well as operating a large dairy ranch, which still remains today.
My Great Grandmother, Claudina Dotta, boarded passage from France after leaving Ticino.
She was in the bowels of the ship as a Third Class Passenger. Disease was ramapant, and by the hand of God she was plucked from the belly of the ship by a First Class family, whose nanny had died on the voyage. She assumed her duties and went through Ellis Island with the family. They stayed in Chicago for a short time, and than headed to San Francisco. En route, the train stopped in Vinton. She met my GG and fell in love. She stayed there with him and had seven children, my beloved grandmother Thelma being the youngest. She stayed and went to school at the old Vinton School house until graduation, which than was the Eighth Grade. She loved the ranch life and stayed there helping the family. She fell in love with the Standard Oil gas truck driver, my grandfather Stormy Weathers. They moved, she, reluctantly till her dying day, to Loyalton. They had three children, Jim, Robert, and my mother, Barbara. Stormy died when my mom was 3. My grandmother was a tough SOB. She drove school bus for years, worked for the Forest Service, as well as on the ranch, and put the three kids into a better life. My mom even had her own horse when she was a girl.
My father's family came from Lithuania. They settled in Illinois and my namesake, my grandfather Lawrence, and my grandmother Winnifred, moved to Sierra Valley in the mid 1950's. My mom and pop went to school together and were married in 1973 in Sierra City. My sister Micah came first, my brother Seth next, than Andrea, and finally me in 1983. My parents are still together and hold on to one of the most naturally stunning properties in the Valley, overlooking the Turner Ranch just below the intersection of highways 89 and 49 a mile north of Sattley. I grew up there, fishing my own creek, Turner Creek, for browns, rainbows and brookies, hunting quail, biking, and loving my Huck Finn childhood. I still do the same things today, as I haven't managed to move past my childhood at the age of 25.
I say these things out of pride. I speak of this history because it is my lineage.
I speak mainly out of fear.
The new age is upon us, I can't wave to half the people I see because I don't know them. The outsiders are slowly weeding out the old families, the lumber industry is dead, and the farming industry is on it's way out as I type.
I feel like I have the last fingers on this heritage, the last bit of sinew that binds me with my ancestors and their ways. All of my friends, save the Martinetti boys, have long abandoned the Valley, leaving a void of native sons that cannot be replaced.
I don't blame them, prosperity lies elsewhere.
But my fear lies in the future of my children.
Will they have the opportunities I did growing up? Hopping fences on the neighbor's ranch to sneak up on some giant browns that don't look like they fit in the tiny creeks? Will they be able to spend summers roaming free in the fields and forests, climbing the mountains that I did and still do? Will they live in a place where you don't lock your doors, where the biggest crimes are committed far away from our consciousness?
I speak of these things in fear. In fear that we are headed down the wrong path, and virtues and natural instincts are set aside in the name of progress and greed.
This is why I want to protect the last, best places.
So what about you?
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