Return to Downieville - 18 years later

Last Weekend I went camping in Tahoe National Forest. It had been 18 years since I had been back. We didn't know exactly where we wanted to go, so before really tackling highway 49 we stopped in at the ranger station. Being a holiday weekend, and being a non-planner, I asked the ranger where we might have campsite luck. She pulled out a gigantic map of the forest and began to point. I told her I wanted to be near Downieville. As she was pointing to campsites I saw something on the map that made my heart stop. A creek called Woodruff Creek. Along the creek was a strip of private land, a mining claim, said the ranger. I told her that my name was Woodruff and that my family used to come up there every summer. I described where we used to camp and about having several claims. It turned out that she had been a ranger in that forest since '79 and worked the fire year (when my grandparents were evacuated down the mountain). I started feeling that this woman, in her fifties probably, must have known my family. Even if she didn't, it felt like it.

When I think of the "Gold Country" as we called it, I think of my cousin, my grandfather, the color of the dirt and the chill of the Yuba. I also think about sharing mini cereal boxes with Hallie and getting donuts in Downieville. I think of my mom's homemade "floatation device" and the hubbub over what each person wanted in their sandwich. I remember Mertyl and rescuing kittens in 1987.

Here are a sequence of photos that I put together from Downieville and Woodruff Creek. (the video takes away some of the photo quality).