Sometime in the Miocene, some 20 million years ago, the long edges of the North American and Pacific plates catch a chunk of north-south crust between them and begin to twist. The chunk turns clockwise, one degree for every 100,000 years, until it settles perpendicular, like a knife buried in the coast, and begins to rise.
The Valley! Like a cupped hand plunged beneath the water, coming up: a ring of hills and mountains and a bowl between them, quivering with sediment, seawater, and muck. The fingers rise and the palm sinks. Are still sinking, still rising. Rain washes trees and dirt and rocks down from the peaks, packs rocks and dirt on top of salt and fish and water, a basin packed 5 miles deep and diving. The mountains sit crosswise to every other range in California. When the water dries, pines grow on the slopes and juniper blossoms on the valley floor.
