a ray of hope

Today was our day of hope. After breakfast with our lovely Chico UU home hospitality folks, we met at Chico State and saw a top sustainability school - lots of recycling, LEED buildings, composting, organic farming. They have it going on!

Next up, Lucy led us to Butte Creek, to the only place in the state where salmon are still running free. The West Canal water district teamed up with environmentalists and the federal government to do something radical - they undammed the creek! It allowed the salmon to stop getting lost in the surrounding rice fields and find their way home to spawning grounds. It's created a beautiful habitat for migrating birds. And it's made a lot of people proud.

Then we toured Lundren organic rice farm, received free rice cakes and rice syrup (yum!), and we got to eat rice cakes right off the rice cake cookery. They tasted so good!

We looked at each other and said - To the Capital we must go! Each of us lobbied our state Senator for recognition of the Winnemum Wintu (catch the blog in a couple of days for pics of us in our bright yellow UULMCA shirts!).

Tomorrow we're floating down the American River so we can commune with the water. We'll be offline for that, and we'll update you as soon as possible afterward!