blue trane's Journal: Stockton

"The Miwok Indians lived in the Central Valley among the delta's waterways, using them for food and transportation." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton,_California)

Stockton is a shock after coming from Indian Grinding Rock Park, where the Miwok ground acorns.

The park was relatively quiet, and the air was fresh. Lots of trees.

Stockton is industrialized, with a constant sound of trucks and trains. I'm in a Motel 6, next to a large trucking yard. All through the night trucks drove past. There's also a garbage dump down the road.

I went for a run to get out of the room which was giving me a headache. I passed an electric traffic warning sign on a small trailer, alerting drivers to a street closure. The end date of the closure was 12/31/2013; it's 1/4/2014 now. So they haven't taken away the out-of-date warning sign. Symptomatic of the city's budget problems?

I should have stayed at the park campsite. The charge was $30, and I didn't have it in cash.

This city reinforces the feeling that western civilization has gone completely wrong, and the Miwok had a better idea of how to live. The air was fresh in the park; here, back in the motel room, already the headache is coming back.

What if we had not overrun the Miwok in the mad rush for gold? Things could have been done differently; white settlers could have coexisted with the Indians, mutually benefited. Civilization could have brought technology but learned to keep population down and live in balance with the environment. We could have had a much more utopian setting instead of the Stockton that exists today.