The top of Snow Mountain was the last place I expected to find anything resembling a traffic jam.
The declaration signed by President Obama in July, making Berryessa Snow Mountain California’s newest national monument, noted that almost half of the state’s 108 species of dragonflies and damselflies are found in the area, and every last one of them seemed to be whizzing about in the clearing in front of me. The air was so thick with dragonflies that they occasionally collided with a crunchy thwack.
There was no way around, and I wasn’t turning back, so I shielded my eyes from incoming dragons and ran.
Berryessa Snow Mountain doesn’t have an iconic postcard-worthy feature like many national monuments; you won’t find anything like the tower of Devil’s Tower or the bridges of Natural Bridges here. What you will find is biodiversity. If that sounds unexciting, try having biodiversity dive-bomb your face in a high-speed blur of wings.
One animal, however, is conspicuously absent from Berryessa Snow Mountain: people. On a midsummer weekend, high season for California camping, I arrived at Bear Creek Campground in Snow Mountain Wilderness anxious that I might not snag a prime spot. The national monument had been declared just a month before — surely others would also be exploring what the area had to offer.
The campground was empty.
There were ancient oaks draped with fragrant lichens, yellow-legged frogs along the creek that shot away at my approach, a dusk sky alive with big-eared bats and dragonflies, and me. It took a few long, twisty dirt roads and a creek crossing to get there, but it’s worth a little dust on your bumper to have a canyon to yourself in the land of the dragonflies.