The Carmel is a lovely little river.  It isn’t very long, but in its course it has everything a river should have.  It rises in the mountains, and tumbles down a while, runs through shallows, is dammed to make a lake, spills over the dam, crackles among round boulders, wanders lazily under sycamore, spills into pools where trout live, drops in against banks where crayfish live.  In the winter it becomes a torrent, a mean little fierce river, and in the summer it is a place for the children to wade in and for fishermen to wander in.  Frogs blink from its banks and the deep ferns grow beside it.  Deer and foxes come to drink from it secretly in the morning and evening, and now and then a mountain lion, crouched flat, laps its water.  The farms of the rich little valley back up the river and take its water for the orchards and the vegetables.  The quail call beside it and the wild doves come whistling in at dusk.  Racoons pace its edges looking for frogs.  It’s everything a river should be.

A few miles up the valley the river cuts in under a cliff from which vines and ferns hang down.  At the base of this cliff there is a pool, green and deep, and on the other side of the pool there is a little sandy place where it is good to sit and cook your dinner.

- John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

Tributaries

??