CALIFORNIA CATHEDRALS

Anyone who has driven in a European countryside will never forget the visual pleasure of approaching a town and seeing a great cathedral dominate the landscape. In some European towns the spire of a simple village church may be seen from far away. Chartre Cathedral can be seen for miles before any of the town’s houses come into view. Seen from across a hayfield and bay, Mont Saint Michel rises in absolute splendor never to be forgotten. Mad Ludwig’s castle rising above the forest can’t be erased from the mind of even the most jaded traveler.

So what do we have in California? Well, there is Yosemite with its Half Dome and cascading water falls, and visitors agree that the towering redwood trees in the Northwest are unrivaled in the world of trees. The natural beauty of our wildernesses and our sea coast imbeds itself in our memories so we can never forget that we live in a wondrous place. When we name architectural wonders, we make a respectably long list that includes San Francisco’s unforgettable Golden Gate Bridge and the newer Sundial Bridge in Redding.

And we have our cathedrals. I don’t mean buildings like Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill or the new Church of the Angels in Los Angeles, a church that only some of the people who see it agree that it is worthy of the name cathedral. Visible from far away, our cathedrals are practical monuments to industry that rise above the flatness of the Great Central Valley. Perhaps it is only because I am in love with the land and with driving or riding or walking across it that I can thrill at the sight of the massive grain elevators that cluster and rise above sunflower fields and rice paddies. When I was a boy, I stared in wonder at the nut and rice storage silos that dwarf homes and businesses in places like Dixon, Sutter, Colusa, Knight’s Landing, and Robbins; and now that I am an old man, I find them just as wondrous. Like cathedrals and castles they seem eternal.

Farm roads and railroad tracks intersect connecting vineyards, orchards, villages, and cities, most of which would be forgettable if it were not for the water towers and storage silos rising above them. The storage silos on the banks of the San Joaquin River in Stockton, for instance, are more memorable than any of the puny city buildings across the bridge even though I know what goes on in the banks and shops in town. I feel mysteriously connected to the gargantuan structures by the docks which remind me that I have needs which could never be satisfied in a shopping mall.