Leaving the Carrizo Plain, driving east on Highway 58, I drive over an unnamed pass – at least an unnamed pass for me – in the Temblor Range and drive down into the Great Central Valley. The Temblor Range is parallel to and just east of the San Andreas Fault and up until I started writing this, I thought it was the Trembler Range (for what I think are obvious reasons).  But, a half an hour later, I found out that temblor means earthquake in Spanish so it turns out that this is sort of Trembler Range after all.

The range itself is an uplifted section of an old seabed called the Franciscan Complex. To quote Roadside Geology of Northern and Central California, The Franciscan complex is one of the world’s grand messes. It is a wild assortment of sedimentary rocks, deposited in seawater at many depths and in widely separated parts of the ocean, along with generous slices of the basalt ocean floor. Between 24 million years ago and 5 million years ago, or so, continental North America ended east of here, but the continent and the North American Plate are not the same thing and the plate, which included most of the continent of North America, also included a slice of the shallow sea to the west. In the picture above, the layers that are now almost vertical, were laid down – underwater and horizontally – in that shallow sea.

Sometime around 5 million years ago, the Farallon Plate, which was being pushed east by the Pacific Plate, crashed into the North American Plate which was being pushed west by the spreading Mid-Atlantic  Ridge. By way of background, the plates under continents, the parts of the earth that are high and dry,  are lighter and are floating higher on the Earth’s mantle than the underwater plates. When two plates with continents crash into each other, like India and Asia, they form mountains, like the Himalayas.   When two plates, one heavier and underwater and the other higher with dry land, the heavier plate dives under the lighter plate. So, when the Farallon Plate crashed into the lighter, North American Plate, it dove back down into the mantle and slid under the North American Plate. Over the following millions of years, that shallow sea bottom to the west of North America,  was then raised up, a little like a bow wave on a boat, by the  Farallon Plate sliding under North American. I love that. The earth is just so alive, it is not just the stuff living on the earth that is alive, the earth, itself, is alive. This part of the world, that was once underwater, is now a low mountain chain, and that makes a very drivable section of road as it winds down through, first scrublands, and then grasslands, dropping into the Central Valley.   

As the road drops, I start seeing abandoned oil fields that are being reclaimed by cattle ranchers. Going by, I wonder how toxic these fields still are and think that, while the cattle might not mind, they are probably concentrating the toxins, unbeknown to the final user, probably a human eating a hamburger.  

When I reach Highway 33, I turn north and start driving through miles of abandoned and refurbished rocking horses as well as lots of new pipes and towers.  This is the  Midway-Sunset Oil Field, the largest oilfield in California. It was discovered in 1894, and, so far, has produced about 3 billion barrels of oil or, to put it another way, that is very, very, roughly 390 million tons of CO2 depending on the oil’s end use. This is not a very pretty place and it smells slightly of sulfur but it is part of the cost of our world and I do not want to demonize the pusher when the real problem is the addict and the society that made that addict. I am one of the addicts, I drove down here after all, chugging through the hydrocarbons. Of course, I don’t want to blame myself for this place, but that would be disingenuous, this place is here because we want the nicely packaged energy. Way back in the 70s, when President Jimmy Carter turned the White House heat down, put on a sweater, and told us to do the same – and we found out that the country didn’t want practical Mr. Rogers when Harold Hill, in an immaculate dark suit, was telling us “It’s morning in America” – way back then, a friend of mine said “This isn’t going to end well, nobody wants to give up their toaster.”

Even people in countries that don’t yet have their toasters, want them. We live a life of comfort and luxury that is both so ubiquitous as to be unnoticed, and unsustainable. We are burning through resources, not just fossil fuels, but all the earth’s resources, like there is no tomorrow. We like to think that we are the smart animals and that we are different, but we are like any other animal without predators, we are multiplying until the environment can no longer support us. It is interesting to watch, in a terrifying way.

I drive north on Highway 33 and clear the oil fields. It is late in the afternoon, I have the car windows down and the air is soft as I start driving through grasslands that go on for miles. It is breathtaking, and my first, reflexive, thought is This is paradise lost.