AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Just a few hours north of here, in the Central Valley, is California's first new state park in a decade. It just opened this summer, and it reimagines what a state park can be. The park is called Dos Rios, meaning two rivers, because the Tuolumne and San Joaquin Rivers merge here. And just upstream from that junction, at the crack of dawn, we meet two conservationists, Julie Rentner and Austin Stevenot, under a canopy of majestic oaks.
JULIE RENTNER: There's a lot of different birds we're hearing right now, and they're all just waking up with this beautiful sunrise. Oh, I even heard a woodpecker just then.
CHANG: Oh my God. How old do you think this one oak tree is?
AUSTIN STEVENOT: I've heard things from 300 years to 200 years, so...
CHANG: Oh my goodness.
These oaks sit on an ancient flood plain, so the plants around here are used to getting their feet wet.
RENTNER: Most of the critters here, the willows, the cottonwoods, the mugworts, are actually stimulated by that occasional flooding.
CHANG: Just 15 years ago, Dos Rios looked nothing like this. Like much of this valley, it was just acres and acres of farmland.
RENTNER: These flood plains were once laser-level fields that grew alfalfa or a rotation of corn and winter wheat.
CHANG: So stepping into this park is like stepping into a time machine where the land has been restored to a semblance of what it used to look like centuries ago, before farms, before towns, before all the berms and levees squeezed these rivers into submission. In the last decade, Julie and the nonprofit River Partners, where she's president, had planted some 350,000 native plants here. And they've punched holes in those berms and levees so when the rivers spill beyond their banks, the water flows freely across this sheet of land, as it did last spring when the rivers rose about 20 feet higher than they are right now.
RENTNER: Just one year ago - you can see the watermarks on the tree where the water was. You know, it would have been waist-high water right now.
CHANG: To the waist? My goodness.
STEVENOT: Last June, I could have given you a boat tour through here. And we were doing that.
CHANG: Really?
STEVENOT: It was about 4 miles wide at the widest.
CHANG: And Julie says when the floodwaters come back, so do the river otters and beavers and waterfowl. And, you know, flooding here means that water can sink into the land, sparing towns downstream.
RENTNER: This place is reducing flood risk for downstream communities by absorbing floodwaters as they pour out of the Sierra Nevadas.
CHANG: The dangers of flooding in this valley is something that Lilia Lomeli-Gil knows quite well. In 1997, she was living in nearby Modesto when floodwaters ripped through the area.
LILIA LOMELI-GIL: The water went in - 4 feet into my house. We were downriver from the sewage plants, so I go, uh uh. No. Let's get out of here, OK? And we came back.
CHANG: It was flooding that forced you to start over in Grayson.
LOMELI-GIL: Yes. It still brings tears to my eyes.
CHANG: In tiny Grayson, right outside Dos Rios, where she lives now, everyone calls her Miss Lily. She's sort of the matriarch of this farming community that stretches only four blocks wide. She runs the community center here.
LOMELI-GIL: It's the only thing in town. I mean, before 2005, there was nothing out here before they even put in the gasoline station - zero.
CHANG: So right now, it's the community center and the one stop - the gasoline station.
LOMELI-GIL: That's it.
CHANG: As we walk through the community center, we see three high schoolers playing Uno...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Uno.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Uno.
CHANG: ...Some kids making pink slime...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hey, you need to grab some...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Food coloring?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: ...Food coloring.
CHANG: ...And a group of teenagers practicing their Rummikub skills for the upcoming Battle of the Big Brains contest.
Are you guys the big brains of the center here?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Laughter).
CHANG: Luchie Sanchez, who's 17, says this community center is pretty much the only place to hang out in Grayson, other than a couple of small parks with busted-up playground equipment.
LUCHIE SANCHEZ: There used to be swings right there. They're gone. They've been gone for years. It just looks - it looks old, and it just - it doesn't look good anymore.
CHANG: So he says he's looking forward to checking out the new park, Dos Rios, tomorrow. It's just 10 minutes from here, and Miss Lily has organized an early morning tour - maybe too early, at least for Luchie.
You just woke up, Luchie?
SANCHEZ: Yup.
CHANG: Good to see you.
SANCHEZ: I just woke up. Good to see you, too.
CHANG: Where's your sun protection? Where's your big hat?
SANCHEZ: I don't know.
CHANG: Did you wear sunscreen today?
SANCHEZ: No.
CHANG: What?
Soon, a dozen people - teenagers, little ones and parents, who, I might add, were wearing their sun protection - hit the trail for their first tour of Dos Rios.
EDUARDO GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
CHANG: With us was their Spanish-speaking tour guide Eduardo Gonzalez.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
CHANG: Eduardo and the other park staff tell us it's essential to the park's mission to engage local families like these - with Spanish-language tours, yes, but also with campfire nights and stargazing parties.
At this point, we've been walking about 20 minutes down the trail, and Eduardo stops the group and gestures to the right...
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
CHANG: ...Where old almond trees sit in manicured rows.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
CHANG: And on the left, it's a completely different landscape - a restored flood plain bursting with wild native trees and bushes.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
CHANG: "What a difference," he says. "Do you see? All the birds and rabbits have swiftly returned to the land on the left."
It's like this little path that we're walking on splits the park between its present and its past. And getting back to the past is the aim of another part of Dos Rios. It's a section of the park that's been set aside for Native Americans.
STEVENOT: (Speaking Miwok). My name's Austin Stevenot.
CHANG: All right. And you are a member of the Northern Sierra Miwok tribe.
STEVENOT: I am.
CHANG: Remember we met Austin under those majestic oaks? Well, a few years ago, River Partners hired him to help transform this plot of land into a Native-use garden where, with permission, California tribal members can collect plants for cultural practices.
STEVENOT: One of these plants we're standing over right here - Carex barbarae, white sedge - they're long rhizomes that grow underneath the ground. And then you take those and use them as wefting material.
CHANG: The thread.
STEVENOT: The thread on a coiled basket.
CHANG: Austin says his ancestors were forcibly removed from their nearby village a century ago, so it means a lot to him to have a piece of this park that his family can now use as their own.
STEVENOT: It looks like a big weed patch right now, but there's a lot here. There's a lot of meaning here.
CHANG: Austin gets a little choked up thinking about how, now, members of his tribe are welcome on this land.
STEVENOT: I mean, we need thousands more acres just like this, right? Not for just water, not for habitat, but for the people of the land, for the people that were here long before everybody else.
CHANG: This park holds promise for so many people, all while restoring native habitat, protecting against flood damage and replenishing the dwindling groundwater in the region. But compared to the vast Central Valley, this place is tiny. It's just 2 1/2 square miles, and it took more than a decade to secure the land and transform it, a project that is still in progress. But even so, Julie Rentner says she is optimistic that this place can be a blueprint for many more parks like it.
RENTNER: Well, we've done the planning. We've done the mapping. Because you're right. It's a big, huge effort. But there's a lot of people who want to help. So when we think about doing maybe 10 more Dos Rioses, we're thinking about just in the next decade, maybe even more.
CHANG: All right.
RENTNER: Yeah.
CHANG: We'll come see you in 10 years for 10 more park openings hopefully.
RENTNER: I'm telling you, they're already planned. They're in the works. It's happening.
CHANG: For Julie, restoring the land to its past is a way of rethinking the state's future. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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