Train Trip to Stockton Provides View of A California Wonder

Amtrak's San Joaquins line runs north from Bakersfield, and as my train chugged through Earlimart, my window gave me a grand view of resurgent Lake Tulare. I couldn't believe my eyes. See the southern Central Valley, over July 4th weekend, underwater:

Shorebirds -- curlews and sandpipers and the like -- are sporting in the endless shallows of the new Lake. Which must taste awfully briny, given the accumulations in the soil, of over a century's worth of industrial toxins flooding the Central Valley. The birds look just like tiny versions of the black-rust bobbing oil pumps dipping in the dry sands just south of this spot. (Awesome -- see America by train!)  I suppose the railroad causeway or levee supporting the tracks, makes an eastern dike to Lake Tulare. Anyway it was a thrill to see this geographic wonder from a comfortable cafe car.

Map of San Joaquin, Sacramento and Tulare Valleys, State of California, prepared under the direction of the Board of Commissioners on Irrigation, appointed under the Act of Congress approved March 3rd 1873, showing the country that may be irrigated and a provisional system of irrigation. Compiled from the Maps of the Geological Survey of California and from Special Survey and Examinations. Scale: 1 inch to 12 miles. 1873. Published by authority of the Hon. Secretary of War in the Office of the Chief of Engineers U.S. Army.