Salinas River Day Celebration
September 20, 2025
Salinas, California
BY DOLORES HOWARD
“I came to Salinas just a few years ago and one of the first friends I made was the Salinas River.”
When I heard this declaration of a relationship with the River from MaFe González, one of the organizers of the Salinas River Day Celebration held last month, I realized that there are other people, besides those of us in San Luis Obispo County, that are in love with the Salinas River! Immediately I became certain that I wanted to be a part of this joyful immersive experience of the Salinas River, near the end of its 175 mile journey to Monterey Bay. As part of Latino Conservation Week, Big Sur Land Trust and BASE Landscape Architecture have been organizing the Salinas River Day Celebration for a few years now, but this was the SLO Beaver Brigade’s first opportunity to take part. I looked forward to traveling “downstream” to being present at this event described as Floreciendo Juntos (Flowering Together).
Early in the morning of September 20, about 30 of us gathered in a parking lot in the city of Salinas to enjoy coffee, pastries and apples from a tree tended by MaFe’s mother. Community members mingled with the many event partners: MaFe González, BASE Landscape Architecture; Jennifer Vasquez, Big Sur Land Trust; Ivette Lopez and Diane Kodama, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Alexis Mendez, Building Healthy Communities Monterey County; Helen Yang, Visionary Arts Studio; Natalie Herendeen and Erin Lawrence, Monterey Waterkeeper; Audrey Taub and I from the San Luis Obispo Beaver Brigade. We were each gifted a beautiful river diary, as “an intimate place to remember how to write letters of love to the river” and then we piled into cars to make our way to the first stop along the Salinas River.
At Blanco Road, we entered a small footpath, ducked under a bridge and came out to a breathtaking view of the Salinas River. I could hardly believe my eyes. So much water! Was this really the same River that begins in San Luis Obispo County? My mind and heart began to understand the expanse of the River. Alexis Méndez of Building Healthy Communities Monterey County invited us all into a circle and began to recount the geological history of the Salinas River and California. He took us back hundreds of millions of years ago in a whirlwind of tectonic plates, volcanoes, and multiple ice ages, and brought us to the appearance of humans 19,000 years ago, in a creation story with Coyote, Hummingbird and Eagle on Fremont Peak. Alexis is in the final stages of a book he started four years ago while still in high school. I will be looking for this book to come out!
No time to waste as we jumped back into the cars filled with budding and experienced river advocates chattering and making our way to the second stop: the Salinas River Bridge on Monte Road. I didn’t want to take my eyes off the incredible width of the River here, but I filled my river diary with notes from the presentation on water quality testing and caring for the River by Erin Lawrence and Natalie Herendeen of Monterey Waterkeeper. Dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature and how they are important to supporting life in the River all became clear in my mind and participants enjoyed trying out the test equipment. Beavers might have come close to stealing the show for the day however, as Audrey’s storytelling of the SLO Beaver Brigade and beavers captured our imaginations.
The final stop for the day was at the Salinas River National Wildlife Refuge, where Ivette and Diane from the US Fish and Wildlife Service greeted us and gave us an overview of the Refuge and our activities for the rest of the afternoon. It was about then that my river diary suffered a stain from the tasty huitlacoche (corn smut)and flor de calabaza (summer squash blossom) gorditas that I helped myself to. And while enjoying the food and conversation near where the River meets the Pacific Ocean, and listening to the rivers playlist, I realized the point of the day: connecting communities to lands and waters is joyful and delicious. Volunteers from elementary school age to young adults seemed to appear from nowhere to help us sketch Western Snowy Plovers on paper fans and make origami fortune tellers as we listened to stories of art and the natural world from Helen Yang of Visionary Arts. The 11 year-old volunteer at our table was extremely well-informed about plovers and gave us much guidance and encouragement on our drawing. I marveled at his approach, so inclusive and motivating, and giggled to myself when he diplomatically told me that my sketch represented “an abstract plover”.
Next, we set off on a walk-and-talk with Diane Kodama, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Refuge Manager. She told us of the wartime activities that once took place at the refuge, as well as the restoration and protection activities that have occurred since that time, and she highlighted features of grassland and dune habitat. Although I knew of backdunes and foredunes, this was my first opportunity to hear of relic dunes. Most fascinating for me was Diane’s description of the interaction between the River and the Ocean. River brings sediment to Ocean, which throws the sediment back up on Shore, creating Dunes. I have always thought of River interacting with Beaver and other Wildlife, but this day I marveled that ultimately River interacts with Ocean as well.
By this time in the afternoon, I had fallen in love with this ocean and river meeting place. We stopped to admire the view of the iconic Salinas River a bit of a way off, and several of us delighted together in discovering sweat bees and other native bees darting in and out of nests on the ground. We looked for “eggs” placed by the volunteers for us to find without getting off of the trail. Once on the beach, we had time to sit and take in the ocean, the warm sand and sun, the sky overhead and an occasional sighting of a plover. The day had been filled with conversation, so I appreciated the opportunity to silently take in the sounds, smells and feelings of the beach. It was good to come back into community together again though, as we all gathered once more for a 360 degree view of the Refuge and Ocean. Someone spotted dolphins in the water and a collective “oooo” went up as we saw them resurface.
The finishing touch of the day was a River Advocate Certificate with a lovely watercolor painting by Janet Whitchurch. The certificate, “signed” by the Salinas River with an outline of the River’s path, was proudly received by each participant. My treasured river diary will accompany me on some of my trips to the Salinas River here in SLO County; both the diary and my certificate went home with me as tangible evidence of the Salinas River Day Celebration, and of witnessing a River that meets an Ocean.
