People: Streamkeeper takes next step in spiritual journey People: Streamkeeper takes next step in spiritual journey (October 12, 2005)

By Marion Softky

Almanac Staff Writer

Jim Johnson, who sparked and led the drive to restore San Francisquito Creek over the last 18 years, has reached another watershed in his life's journey.

On September 7, Mr. Johnson, the official streamkeeper for the creek and its tributaries, retired to spend the rest of his life in India pursuing spiritual practice. He has already left.

In India, Mr. Johnson plans to take vows of renunciation (sannyas). "Seva" (selfless -- read unpaid -- service) is part of the process," he wrote in his letter of resignation, "so perhaps I'll end up as streamkeeper in the headwaters of the Ganges."

Mr. Johnson's revelation of his deep inner life took his friends and fellow creek lovers by surprise. "Gosh, Jim, we hardly knew you," someone commented at a farewell luncheon attended by some 30 creekies.

"Jim Johnson is and has been at the heart and soul of the San Francisquito Creek watershed protection and restoration movement," says Pam Sturner, coordinator for the San Francisquito Watershed Council, one of the organizations Mr. Johnson helped found. "His dedication and passion are an inspiration for us all."

Ever since he found two dead steelhead just below the landmark redwood El Palo Alto in the spring of 1988, his passion has been to bring the stream that divides Menlo Park and Palo Alto back to health. At the same time, his work -- to restore the steelhead and native plants, to get rid of litter and invading animals and plants -- has become part of his spiritual journey. Environmental work, when well done, he says, helps "make whole this living body of God."

Although Mr. Johnson has not talked about his spiritual quest, many of his friends have felt it. "His work in the watershed was spiritual. That's what I miss the most," says Jerry Hearn of Los Trancos Woods. "We need more people like that."
Spiritual journey

Religion and spirituality have been very important to Jim Johnson all his life. "I used to give sermons as a kid," he says during an interview in a patch of giant reeds that he and volunteers have been cutting down on the Webb Ranch.

As a kid living a Tom Sawyer childhood near Spring Creek, Minnesota, Jim loved exploring the woods and creeks, fishing, and racing canoes on the Mississippi River. Sometimes he fell into a trance. He still remembers waking up from a deep reverie by the creek when a cow licked his face. Her eyes were deep, black and loving. "I felt very blessed that day," he wrote in his farewell letter before leaving for India.

Mr. Johnson's life became confused during his young adult years. There was college at St. Olaf's, a year in a theological seminary, San Francisco in 1967 during the summer of love, and a marriage that didn't work. He worked for the Carnegie Institute at Stanford for a while and pursued a lifelong interest in botany at Stanford.

In 1979 Mr. Johnson hit bottom. He was unemployed, living out of his car, sleeping in quarries in the hills behind Stanford. And "intensively questioning existence." He recalls, "I went from almost accepted into graduate school at Stanford to being homeless within a month."

Then his life changed. In a deep sleep one night, Mr. Johnson had a transforming vision of a blue-skinned god with long black hair, a peacock feather crown and a jewel at his navel. Only later did he identify the Hindu god, Krishna.

Since then, Mr. Johnson has pursued the spiritual path of Hinduism. He got a job at Roger Reynolds nursery in Menlo Park. In 1981, he went to India to see a guru known as "Ma." In India he endured the shock of a westerner first exposed to the extraordinary poverty and wealth of a different culture.

Mr. Johnson also received many blessings. One was from Ma, who was born in 1896 and was widely revered. "I was called," he says.

Another blessing came, by an accident of timing -- Mr. Johnson calls it a premonition -- from the Dalai Lama. "He held my hands between his and looked into my eyes."

Back in this country, Mr. Johnson followed his new path. He had several jobs. For a while he worked at the Doll House Factory in Menlo Park. Later he worked for Mary Rafferty, and then Tribal Eye -- until the Watershed Council put him on the payroll.

Now that the watershed programs are thriving, Mr. Johnson has saved enough money to go back to his spiritual home. "Over here I'd be living under a bridge; over there I can be a benefactor," he concludes. "It's all connected. It's spiritual."
Voice of the creek

That day in 1988, two dead steelhead and the filth of the nearby homeless encampments inspired Jim Johnson to start a movement. "This is what I was supposed to do," he says.

Mr. Johnson began organizing friends of the creek and agencies involved with the creek, including Stanford, to save the last free-flowing steelhead run in the South Bay.

This was a large and complex challenge. San Francisquito Creek, which is the dividing line between Menlo Park and Palo Alto -- and between San Mateo County and Santa Clara County -- drains the water that falls on 43 square miles, extending from Page Mill Road to Kings Mountain on Skyline.

Mr. Johnson set up a meeting at Stanford in 1993 attended by 93 people and 37 agencies and groups. They launched the official organization, sanctioned by the federal government, that coordinates planning to manage the creek and its resources.

That agency, now called the San Francisquito Watershed Council, is based in Palo Alto; it is a branch of the conservation organization, Acterra.

Mr. Johnson has continued to spearhead efforts to improve the creek and educate people about it. These range from regular cleanups and getting a fish ladder on Los Trancos Creek, to removing the homeless encampments. "Now the homeless are gone -- mostly -- and there's not as much trash," he says.

One of Mr. Johnson's passions has been re-vegetation -- getting rid of plants (and animals) that threaten the creek and its habitats, and replacing them with natives.

Just weeks before leaving for India, Mr. Johnson was leading work crews cutting down the hugely invasive arundo donax, a giant reed from Asia that clogs the creek and causes flooding. During the 1998 floods, he says, clumps of arundo clogged the University Avenue bridge. "It sent water 2 feet deep through Whiskey Gulch and the water ended up on Bayshore."

Other plants that cause problems are cape ivy, Himalayan blackberries (the delicious ones with the fierce thorns), French broom, and slender false brome, which has taken over fields and forests in Oregon and is at work in the Thornewood Open Space Preserve in Woodside.

Over the years, Mr. Johnson has gathered seeds from plants native to the local watershed and established a nursery to raise them. He's established nine areas in Menlo Park, Portola Valley and Woodside where volunteers plant the young natives along the creeks.

Flooding is another huge issue with the creek. Mr. Johnson and his group suggested creation of an official government agency, called a joint powers authority, made up of government agencies that would have more clout and ability to raise funds.

Nothing happened until the creek overflowed in the El Nino storms of 1998. "After the flood, people stopped laughing," Mr. Johnson says.

Now a JPA is negotiating with the Army Corps of Engineers and worrying about the adequacy of levees along the Bayfront.

Mr. Johnson is leaving a strong organization to carry on his work. He was named official streamkeeper early on. Now the watershed council has 50 streamkeepers, with 15 more in training. "They are the eyes and ears of the creek," Ms. Sturner says.

The biggest challenge facing the creek is keeping its water, says Mr. Johnson. "People have been drilling hundreds of irrigation wells. ...The creek is disappearing, even in wet years. Summer flows and deep ponds are disappearing.

"Once the creek dries up, the fish die. They can't take a hotel."

Mr. Johnson's farewell message as he heads to the ashrams of India: "Watch over it."
INFORMATION

For information on the San Francisquito Watershed Council, call Pam Sturner at 962-9876, ext. 304, or visit acterra.org/watershed.

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