By Kaylin Paschall, TME

The first volume of A View From The Ridge Route, written and curated by Bonnie Ketterl Kane, opens with what Ancient Peoples believed is the creation story of their world and the world of which we currently reside today.

The San Emigdio Mountain range lies between the Coastal Mountains to the west and the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains, or Tehachapi Mountains, to the east. This U-shape formation extends around the southern portion of what was once a vast inland sea.

Modern understanding of plate tectonics is that major fault lines like the San Andreas, Garlock, and the Big Pine faults explain how the inland sea became trapped, forming a giant freshwater lake.

Ancient Peoples have another explanation and belief: The mountains and great valley were formed when the entire world was water.

In the first chapter of the first volume of her five-part historical series, Bonnie has captured a local legend about how the mountain ranges we know and love today came to be.

Hawk Turns the Mountains

“At the southern end of the Great Valley, there was a pole standing far up out of the water and on this pole perched a hawk and a crow.

First one…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

A hawk ignores the aggressive attempts of a black bird to knock him off his perch

An illustration by Susan Sjoberg Hollander

The Rancho Fire of 2013 spanned the gap between the Tehachapi range and the Emigdio Ranges, crossing Interstate 5.

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This is part of the September 30, 2022 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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