Those phrases aptly describe the scene I encountered in January, some 70 years after the novel’s publication. Drought appeared a distant reminiscence; the inexperienced hillsides contrasted with the Salinas’ swift, muddy present. Along River Road, I met a pair taking their morning stroll on a muddy path alongside the swollen Salinas. In the practically 30 years they’ve lived on the town, the person informed me, he has by no means seen the Salinas so giant—although, he added, in a long time previous, the river did carry a bigger and extra constant stream. “There used to be a slaughterhouse right here,” he stated, gesturing to a row of riverside properties. “They would discharge blood straight into the river. The water was always red.”

As I headed out of city on Highway 101, the rain began up, battering the windshield. In the transient breaks between downpours, the land morphed right into a foggy dreamscape. I finished at a pullout overlooking the river and the huge San Ardo oilfield. A rainbow arched over the Gabilan Range within the distance. A number of months earlier, these hills had been sun-blistered and desolate. Now they glowed a vivid inexperienced, and the river ran with a roar, carrying dozens of large logs in its present.

I hoped to achieve the water’s edge by means of a potholed oilfield highway. But a barricade and two personal safety vans blocked the best way. Inside one of many automobiles, a person lounged again in his seat, seemingly asleep.

It’s solely as a result of I’ve pushed this stretch of Highway 101 dozens, maybe a whole lot, of occasions that I’ve begun to note that there are not any scenic pullouts to attract consideration to the valley’s namesake river, no preserves or riverside parks. Usually, the one signal a river is there in any respect is a blue squiggle on a GPS map—an abstraction that masks the fact, which is that what stays of the river is eternally yoked to business.

The Salinas is uncared for, I believe, partly as a result of it’s by nature a furtive river. It begins as a collection of obscure streams, lots of that are intermittent, coursing by the chaparral and low-elevation pine forests of the Temblor and Coast ranges. Its anonymity is enhanced by the truth that the river is, for many of its size, inaccessible; it cuts throughout personal property or alongside the margins of small and out-of-the method cities comparable to Chualar, Gonzalez, San Ardo, Soledad, San Miguel.

These small agricultural cities, based by Spanish settlers and missionaries within the 18th century, are at the moment ensconced in an agricultural panorama that collectively produces 28 p.c of the nation’s strawberries, 57 p.c of its celery, and 70 p.c of its lettuce. Monterey County has additionally develop into one of many nation’s main producers of wine grapes. Anytime you’re taking a sip of cabernet or take a chunk of Caesar salad, there’s a great probability you’re, in essence, consuming from the Salinas.

For the final decade, the dearth of water has exacted a mighty toll on the farms and farmworkers of the Salinas Valley. Now the issue was an excessive amount of water—or a minimum of an excessive amount of of it, too rapidly. With 1000’s of acres underwater, scores of farmworkers had been out of the blue out of labor. Still, I noticed dozens out within the fields, toiling by the storm. Clad in rainslickers, they hunched over muddy rows of berries and greens, gathering what they may earlier than the floodwaters washed the harvest away. Even in a disaster, the dehumanizing economics of the Salinas Valley prevailed: The lives of the farmworkers had been clearly valued lower than the crops they tended. Meanwhile, their very own neighborhoods had been those most impacted by the floods. They had been trapped between rising floodwaters and misplaced wages. The flooding of the Salinas Valley took the best toll on the individuals who might least afford it.