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CASCADIA: Shasta Lake & the Displaced · Curious Cat - where science & supernatural collide

• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Foggy Seattle mornings are this author's favorite writing companions.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I love curling up with a notebook and pen on the couch, the cat beside me, dog at my feet, to jot down traces of a dream or a story outline or ideas for the podcast.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: This mini episode was born in that cozy space.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: As I was researching Mount Shasta, giving the place a fresh deep dive for the new book, I remembered something: Shasta Lake.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: As we drove past this lake from I5 as a kid, I'd watch houseboats peeking out the window, like I was like a soldier in a foxhole, wondering how anyone could float on that creepy body of water.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: In one instance, dad pulled over where there was a boat launch because someone needed to go to the bathroom.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: A family wearing matching red striped t-shirts was loading supplies onto a boat, and their joy was obvious.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it felt like the opening shot of a horror movie, like Spielberg-esque, a glimpse of a picture-perfect family that's set up to lull the viewer into a feeling of safety before it all goes to hell in a handbasket.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm not the only one that feels uneasy at the sight of Shasta Lake.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And recently someone found a prosthetic leg in the waters.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and if this place doesn't give you nightmares, it might after you hear the creepy pasta from YouTube about a fisherman that goes missing and the claw marks on the side of his abandoned boat.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Located in Northern California, not far from Reading, it is the state's largest reservoir.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was made between 1935 and 45 in tandem with the construction of Shasta Dam that spans the Sacramento River.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: It covers 30,000 acres of what was once a valley.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: When Shasta Lake is completely full, it can reach depths of 500 feet at places.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Shasta Lake is known as the houseboat capital of the world, which I didn't know there was one, and it's a water sport playground too.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Besides fishing, skiing, swimming, and wakeboarding, visitors love exploring the Shasta Lake Caverns and seeing the massive Shasta Dam from the water.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Shasta Lake, a massive man-made reservoir, but what was the valley before it was drowned?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the suburbed town of Kenneth exists there, the railroad town that drowned for the dam.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Once a booming copper mining town with over 40 saloons, a hotel, and an opera house, probably a whorehouse or two also, Kennet was evacuated and drowned by the Rising Lake, with the last residents leaving it in 1944.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Other submerged locations include Baird, Copper City, and several Winton Indian village sites.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: There were other towns that were submerged by the lake, which they alluded to with that.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Eight in total, and a lot of Native American villages.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: When Shasta Dam was built across the Sacramento River and the reservoir filled in the 1940s, eight towns and numerous homesteads were permanently flooded, besides Kennet.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I just had to know more.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: I did a little more diving and I found Winthrop and Delamar.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: These communities were built around the lucrative Bully Hill mining district, which produced vast amounts of copper, gold, and silver.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's Baird, home to the historic Baird Fish Hatchery, and it was established on the MacLeod River in 1872.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Other submerged settlements that they've named are Copper City, Elmore, Edder, Morley, and Pitt.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: When the waters of Shasta get low, remnants are visible of these towns.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine seeing them or swimming through building foundations.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: It makes my skin crawl to think about.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: The construction flooded the ancestral lands of the Wintu people, particularly the Winnam Winto, or the Middle Water people who lost traditional fishing, hunting, and sacred sites along the MacLeod and Sacramento rivers.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I could not find an exact number of Native American villages that were submerged when Shasta Dam was built, but I did learn this.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: When the Shasta Dam was built, the rising waters of Shasta Lake flooded a number of traditional villages of the Winnam Wintu tribe.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not recorded as a single total count, but the lake submerged roughly 90% of their sacred and ceremonial sites, including ancient villages like Kaibai.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the source for this was SF Gate.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: As for the impact of the Winnam Wintu, the creation of the reservoir flooded about 30,000 acres of ancestral homelands along the MacLeod, the Pitt, and Sacramento Rivers.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Important cultural locations, dance grounds, and burial sites remain deep under the water.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: The federal project forced the tribe from their traditional river villages, and they remain unrecognized by the federal government today.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's a present-day fight over the dam waters as well.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: There was talk in 2017, I believe, about raising the waters of the reservoir.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the Native American people have uh they have thoughts about that.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I found an article from Judy Silber.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: She was republished by Science Friday, and I have the links posted to her article in the show notes.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: In it, Silber writes this quote, Shasta Dam stands 602 feet high.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's the country's eighth tallest.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: It turned California into a giant, an agricultural engine that it is today.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's also left a legacy of harm when it flooded the Winnam and other Windu people off their land.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: End quote.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I did find more in Judy Silber's reporting.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: This dam destroyed my people's land, she writes.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: The burial grounds, the hunting grounds, the fishing grounds, says Chief Sisk.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: None of the people on the river wanted to give up their homes.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want to leave the river.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: She's talking about the McLeod River.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: The McLeod is one of Shasta Dam's main tributaries, and for the Winnem, it is their homeland.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: When the dam was built in the late 1930s and early 40s, they were forced to leave, forever changing where and how they live.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Chief Sisk continues, we didn't get any land on the McLeod River.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't get anything for everything that was taken.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: We were displaced and homeless, and our people were in the boarding schools and in the service.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when they came home, they had to have a different kind of life.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: End quote.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Young men like Calvin Sisk, Chief Sisk's father, returned from World War II to find their homes disappeared.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: They had to make their way however they could.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Also displaced from the McLeod were Chinook salmon.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: For thousands of years, they provided a food source for the area's indigenous people who regarded salmon as a sacred relative.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: But when Shasta Dam went up, it blocked the fish.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: They could no longer get to the McLeod.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: The salmon didn't run up the river, Chief Callinsisk tells the group, and we didn't have any rights to fish on that river anymore.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: A security guard in a brown uniform entered through a side door.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: He said he wants to make sure everyone is feeling calm.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: This group had assembled at an information center to inform them about the Winto and the Winnem people.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Reading, the city where Shasta Dam is located, is not a big town.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: The Winamem know him, this security guard, through personal connections.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Are we relaxed?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: He asked.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: We can sing a song to get more relaxed, Chief Sisk said.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like a flash mob, but without the moves, the group breaks into song.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Respect the people, tell the truth, tell the story of Winnam win to.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: We are the salmon and the salmon are us.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Built a swimway so the salmon can run.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: The song encapsulates the group's main demands to include information about the indigenous people flooded out by the Shasta Dam, and an investment they'd like to see in a swimway to help salmon return to streams and lakes above the dam be built.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: The audience consists of the security guard, the front desk woman, the gift shop employee, and the cameras.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: The singing offers a release of tension, the expression of frustration with a system that has all but erased the winimum wind to.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't there anyone you could call?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Chief Sisk asks.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Shasta Dam is a major infrastructure project.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Its operations impact farmers and municipalities across the state.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: The Bureau of Reclamation's website shows that the agency's Northern California Area Office and Shasta Dam Visitor Center share an address, but the security guard repeats, there are no administrators around.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's no wonder that they don't know who we are because there's nothing here that even says anything about the Winam Wind tube being flooded by this dam, Chief Sisk says.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: The security guard leaves.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: One of the men in the group is a Pomo ceremonial singer from Lake County named Gary Thomas.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: He leans over and whispers to Chief Sisk, maybe they think you're all under the lake still, that you don't exist anymore.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: The lake he's talking about is Shasta Lake, created by Shasta Dam.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: In 1943, it flooded a huge area.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about that, 30,000 acres, which included Winnam Wintu villages, sacred sites, and burial grounds.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: In the process, it expelled a culture that had already survived genocide and settler occupation.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Since that forced exile, the Winnem Wintu have managed to hold on to their identity and culture, but just barely.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Chief Calleen turns to the group.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: All we're asking for is the justice to be recognized and dealt with in a humanistic manner, she says.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're real people, like we really have something that belongs to this river, and the river belongs to us.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that, right there.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Filming behind the door is the treatment that we get.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're asking for some justice and to sit down with somebody.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's now one minute before closing.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: There are no Bureau of Reclamation staff around, but she decides they will read the letter that they've brought out loud anyway.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Her son Michael Preston faces the cameras.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: He stares down at a piece of paper and reads this, to whom it may concern.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: We want the history and present realities of the Winaman Wyntu tribe from our point of view to be included in a permanent exhibit in the visitor center on Shasta Dam.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: To accurately represent the suffering we have endured for the state of California's water supply.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is only right that our sacrifice and contribution to California be acknowledged.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: The installation of Shasta Dam and its operation since 1945 has had devastating effects on the Chinook and other fish, as well as all the wildlife, beavers, bear, mountain lions, and all the plant life that have depended on the free-flowing waters that have been impeded for 74 years.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: There needs to be made public a list of all the species that have been negatively affected by the dam.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Such a list should include the reduction of the number of winnum wind tube population.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: That is a beautiful letter, and I hope that at some point the administrators actually heard their words and they're very, very tender and um realistic and reasonable requests.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, as a kid, when I heard talk of taking down dams, it scared me.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I thought destroying dams would be wasteful, it would hurt surrounding towns, and it would somehow mark the end of something I couldn't quite put my finger on.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: But as an adult reading about this complicated issue, I realized the dams feel um, they feel dirty, they feel wrong, and they feel complicated for sure.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the intent behind them feels a little tinged with malice, like they were maybe engineered to destroy the memories of cultures that were here long before white settlers.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: The dams destroyed sacred sites.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: They destroyed villages, artifacts, and the rhythms of the communities that had relied and danced in harmony with this land and this water, the sustenance of the rivers that they relied on and the surrounding banks for thousands and thousands of years.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just Native American sacred sites and villages and mining towns that were drowned because of Shasta Dam.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: The dead were disturbed as well.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Best Count say 26 cemeteries, native and non-native burial grounds, were disturbed.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: The families that could be reached were, and they were asked if they wanted their loved ones to be disinterred and reburied or left beneath the water reservoir, which became Shasta Lake.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Here is much more on that history from an unlikely hero taking care of one of those landing places for the disinterred.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: From Shasta Scout feature titled Underground Good, which featured Jessica Foster in this article, reporter Sharon Brizzelara writes this Jessica Foster has been caretaking the Central Valley Cemetery for the past four years, ever since she lost her son.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: She has encountered a great deal of solace and connection in her work at the cemetery and a sense that her actions matter.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: In this interview, she shares what her efforts to keep the property clean mean to her.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: End quote.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I have linked the entire article in the show notes.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Please give it a read and subscribe to their online news site.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is wonderful.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: The article continues this way.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: When they were building the Shasta Dam, they contacted families to see if they wanted to move the graves of their family members before the lake filled.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think there were 26 cemeteries under where the dam is.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: They got a hold of 301 family members, and most said yes, they would like their loved ones here.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: They moved 298 people here.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Another two people went to the cemetery on Cyprus, and one went down south.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: The others are still under the dam.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are graves here from the 1800s.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: I know where everyone's graves are, said Jessica.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: There are two sections in the cemetery.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Over there is the Native American side.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: I saw the area over there had grass and weeds up to my shoulder tall.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: I weeded it down.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the neighbors were concerned about it being a fire hazard, so I decided to weed eat it all.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I got permission from the Winto Cultural Center to do that, but I mainly just do weed eating and picking up branches that have fallen down.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's a video on YouTube called California Unearthed, where a guy talks about the history of the dam and this cemetery in particular.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you watch it, you can see the difference from six years ago to now.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: When I started working here, it was just weeds.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't even see graves.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: It looked like a field of nothing, just debris and trash everywhere.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: End quote.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Asked what she does when she comes to the cemetery.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jessica responded, quote, I've uncovered 65 graves.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: I put flowers on all the graves I uncover, but when it rains, the water will push all the dirt down and it covers all the graves, and nobody knows that they're there.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: The only way I found them was from raking.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: There are also graves that don't have any name marker.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Some have a marker that says only known to God.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's no map for this place.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Someone told me they lost the map for it, but I know where people are buried, and when people come to the cemetery, they ask me if I know where so-and-so is.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'll think about it and then I find the grave for them.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: I filled up three city dump trailers once with brush and trash.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've gotten a burn permit before to burn branches and leaves.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I cleaned off the graves and put flowers on them.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I had a GoFundMe site for a minute so I could get flowers and tools.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: I would come in the morning and work from 9 to 11 and then go home and come back at 6 and work till 9 twice a day.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I will see gravestones or markers that have fallen down.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't pick them up, but I will put flowers or flags right beside them.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: I just leave them there because I don't know exactly where they came from originally.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: I just got all these flags donated to me about three weeks ago from the cemetery over there on Continental.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: They donated 150 flags, and I thought all of these graves are so old, I think they all deserve a flag.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was just going to put them on the veterans' graves, but I thought it looks nice on all of them.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Recently, I didn't come in for 10 days, and when I came here I wanted to cry.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was after a storm and it was a complete mess.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: The flags were knocked down.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: My friend is supposed to bring me another dump trailer so I can pick up all the piles of brush soon.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I've used my wheelbarrow and two plastic swimming pools to haul brush and leaves.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: I fill them up and drag them with a rope to a bigger pile.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Reporter Brizzlara asked, When did you first start coming here?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Jessica answered, October 23rd, 2020 is when my 15-year-old son Chevy got killed.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: He was with his best friend.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: No one had ever taught his friend about guns and he didn't know there would be a bullet in the chamber when he was playing with it.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: He was just here all day with me.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: He told me I want to vouch for you and all the cleaning you do.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: She's talking about her son, you know.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Note to listeners, the Shasta County Sheriff's Office has created a flyer on firearm safety, the eleven commandments of gun safety, available on the Health and Human Services Agency website under specialized resources, firearm safety.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: At first when I came here, I didn't really do much, Jessica said.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'd just sit here, but every day I would make my son's grave different because it was just a big pile of dirt.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: People were coming every day to see him.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: He has friends that come here four years later to visit.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have never even been to a cemetery before, but when he died, I would stay here at night with him.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: I would sleep here a lot with him by myself.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not scary.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's no evil here.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not scared at all here at night.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's so pretty and colorful here because the lights we have strung up all around his grave lighted up.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I just started working.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, this place is so ugly.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I worked on his grave and slowly started doing other areas and ended up doing the whole cemetery.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was a mess here at first.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know where to begin.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: There were piles of branches as big as trees falling down.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: On the native side, there are folks who come sometimes and clean things up, but I haven't seen anyone on this side.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Some days I'd be working so hard I couldn't even move at the end of the day, but I felt like this is what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't find out who owned this place to even ask anything at first.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: One person at City Hall was really nice.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: He replied back to my emails and gave me a contact.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: When I called them, they said they didn't have any funding for cleanups, but I could keep volunteering here.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've been volunteering for four years.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: People say it looks amazing, so different from before.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: I guess the Shasta County Coroner owns this cemetery.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just found that out, but I feel in some ways that it's mine.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: End quote.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Note the coroner's office confirmed that the cemetery is within their jurisdiction.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Given budget limitations, a spokesperson said this.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: They are typically only able to clean the cemetery twice a year.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: The reporter asked, How have people responded to your work at the cemetery?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Jessica answered this.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: One of the neighbors told me, I've lived here since 1967, and this place never looks so nice.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've had a lot of people tell me, Oh my gosh, this place looks amazing.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Who cleaned it?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like me.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: They say, You did all that.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Earlier, since I would be here in the morning and at night, one neighbor told me, You need to leave.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to end up killing yourself.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is not healthy for you.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: But this is just how I'm dealing with it, you know.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: I have spent over 13,000 hours here.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: All those hours helped me forgive my son's friend and forgive myself.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: At first I was angry.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: The things I would think of doing were not nice, but I'm not a hateful person, and being here has made me realize that.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Spending all those days and hours here in the snow, in the rain, It doesn't matter.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: It helped me forgive.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was mad at myself too.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Doing this turned me into, I think, a better person.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: When other people say you need to stop being here, I think, what do you mean?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: I have already spent so many hours here.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: You think I'm going to stop now?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not till I'm satisfied with it.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't come and just sit here and cry.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'll come sit with him when I take a break.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: I do this now because I want to do it.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make it nice here.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: It should be nice.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's a cemetery.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: The reporter asked, Have you had help from others?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And she answers, I got city dump trailers over here once with the help of a friend.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: He brought one and then a few days later he brought me another.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: We filled the first one.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: It had 6,000 pounds of stuff cleaned up from here.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: I used to make dream catchers after Chevy died as a small fundraiser.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: I put out dream catchers that people could take and they would give a small donation that would go towards the cemetery for flowers and flags and tools that I needed.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: This one guy, he's called the tree man or the tree guy.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: He gave me his card and told me to call him so he could do all the trees.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: He took care of one that was blocking the road up there.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: I also had a lady that saw the table and told me, I'll be right back.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go get your donations for my house and bring you some tools.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: She brought me shovels and rakes and stuff.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: I have rakes all over the place.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: The reporter asked, What does this mean to you to work and be in this space?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: She answered, I had to take a break for a minute to learn how to deal with my grief better, but I'm back and I'm doing something that I want to do.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: No cemetery should ever look uncared for, right?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would take a job here if there was one.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: My son is an angel.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: I planted that tree for him.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: He has six siblings.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I need to get six angels to put around the tree.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the next day there were six mushrooms, little baby mushrooms that grew up under the tree.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: I had pictures of it.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then we were at the lake one day, and you know how the water was so super low a couple years ago, and you could drive way out?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: His little two-year-old sister found a ring in the water that had a Chevy symbol inside.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: What are the chances of a two-year-old finding a ring in the middle of where the water's always been?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Things like that have helped me get through.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: I have this one video of the moon that I put on Facebook with the caption, missing you, son.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: I had taken it from in front of the campfire.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: When I looked at the picture, you could see this thing come out of the fire and go underneath the moon.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, what the heck was that?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: I did it again and it happened again.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: You could see a cross and then an angel.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: The reporters asked this, if people want to help your efforts, what can they do?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Tree services would be great.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone wants to come out here and help with the piles of brush or the trees that have fallen down, it's a very big cemetery.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hauling trash would be great.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: That would help me out a lot.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: They could message me on Facebook at Jessica Foster if they would like to help.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything else you want people to know?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm taking care of their loved ones and the forgotten ones, so even if they don't have a lot of time to visit, it will look nice when they come.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Shasta Scout is seeking other nominees for their underground good feature.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Find links to this article and their site in the show notes.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: The last story about Lake Shasta is a doozy and I almost fell for it, but wishing for a thing to be factual doesn't make it so.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Still, this makes for a fantastic story, especially if this episode finds you in the run-up to Halloween.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's a creepy pasta from YouTube about a fisherman that went missing and the puzzling clues left behind in his wake.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was a fixture on the man-made lake, there each week to fish and find his serenity.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: He always told his wife when he was heading out to his boat, and he also had an automatic alert set up that showed his wife his location every 15 minutes or so.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this one particular day, the alerts worked until they stopped.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: By the time his wife realized it wasn't just an internet glitch, she and she called authorities, his boat had been found.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: But he wasn't on board.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: The boat had come to rest on the shores of a small inlet.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Searchers boarded the boat and saw his fishing lines were still out, but it was the clumps of fur in the ice chest that turned a casual search into a frenetic, desperate effort.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Deep claw-like scratches on the side of the boat left everyone with the sense they would never find the man or know the true reason for his disappearance.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is such a fun watch on YouTube.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is fiction fun.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I say that because commenters seem downright angry that there isn't a real missing person's case attached to this.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're like disappointed, but the video makes it super clear right off the top that this is a work of imagination.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sheesh people, just some good fun.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed my little dip into the waters of Shasta Lake, a place that scared me as a kid.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I still wouldn't go out on a houseboat there, but good luck to the people that decide to do that.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay curious.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: I love you.