Giant Sequoias script inspiration

“The Last Drop is an amusing look at an existential crisis. It’s off to a solid start, and with a clearer focus, the script has real potential in the current marketplace.” Stephanie Schellerup- Upwork Coverage Editor

Nothing clears the mind of the flotsam and jetsam of life than a few days off camping in the woods. Five miles will win you an encounter with this magnificent specimen, this is Agassiz— one of the four or five largest and oldest Giant Sequoias in existence. These trees are confined to the western slope of California’s Sierra Nevada.

There are an estimated 80,000 trees remain in their range. Due to California’s climate change impacted wildfires— these are events that take advantage of a slightly hotter and slightly drier weather pattern are threatening this trees survival.

You can go to the coast and witness sea level rise undermining shoreline cliffs. Last year there reservoirs stood near empty, this year Tulare Lake reappeared and swallowed whole vast acres of farmland.

Everywhere you travel in California the climate emergency has altered what people are talking about. It may be the record setting snowfall or the abundance of mosquitos— there’s always something. Citizens who’ve lived in these parts for some time will volunteer how odd our weather has become.

I don’t have to use my imagination at all. The story of our climate emergency is volunteered by people I meet while I travel near and far.

The Last Drop deals with the water shortages along the Colorado River. My next story will take on the coastlines fragile cliffs that keep crumbling into the sea. A fraction of this erosion occurs in some of the state’s most remote locations while all too often these events hit hard and change the lives of people living in San Clemente, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz.

I’m still casting about for a gripping story to accompany the crumbling cliffs. I’ve yet to have convinced myself I have the makings of a durable plot. These things take time. While I wait I’ll do more research. I’d like to get a look at the problems they are having in San Clemente. Of course that will be me looking at a building about to fall off a cliff, but maybe I can find a story if I go and if I can get people to tell me about how their lives are being changed by the chaos that is this climate emergency.