INTRINSIC HABIT

 

 

 

Too many years courting goddesses,

genuflecting at the foot of ridgetops:

oak trees sharp and close enough to touch

 

to beg relief—to even entertain

such shameful blasphemy, such

feeble will to forever lose their ear.

 

Every river canyon churns to fill

and spill its reservoirs, white-capped

Sierras stacked with two-year’s snowpack

 

awaiting summer’s melt to flood the flats

and yet I can’t concede what is not me:

always ready, waiting for a good-hard rain.

 

 

OUR SHORT MOMENT

 

 

We have left our mark on this ground:

the house, the pipe, the horses,

cattle, shop and barn—and the avenues

 

between them—that were not here

forty years ago where the deer lay down

beside the road. Our tracks everywhere

 

we worked details into grazing hillsides

and raising calves you’ll never see

before they are erased by time’s storms

 

and someone else’s appetites and dreams.

Our short moment among the mortar holes

and pictographs that will outlive our presence.

 

 

Spilling Terminus Dam

 

Road closures everywhere, San Joaquin Valley flooded, haven’t left Dry Creek Rd. for a week. Glad we’re on higher ground.  3.5″ more forecast Sunday thru Friday next week.

I am reminded of Christmas Eve, 1955.  Much to my father’s chagrin and contrary to his good judgement, we celebrated with my mother’s parents, Dorothy and Floyd Cutler in Green Acres, Visalia.  Mill Creek ran beside the home and we all took turns watching it rise on the concrete steps leading up from their garage.  When it was time to leave, my Dad carried us three kids and Christmas presents through 3 feet of water to the car, then got the ’53 Buick stuck.  My grandfather hooked on to it with his Studebaker pickup and we drove back to Exeter through the swamps (Lovers Lane to Anderson Road) on the two-lane highway in two plus feet of water (Kaweah River before the Terminus Dam), wincing every time we met another vehicle’s wake in the headlights.  

 

FLOODWATER

 

The creek-flood bears no malice

as it carves its way to a flatland war

unearthing trees and buried cobbles

 

of past centuries—laying waste

to man’s old and new improvements.

It cares no more than the clouds and rain

 

that feed its energy, its violence

and its thunderous roar.  Nor does it

bestow charity to soothe our minds

 

and flesh—it has no agenda, no noble

purpose nor dishonorable motives.

It just is what it always has been.

 

 

THE GRAY DAYS

 

Every day is a holiday

when you can’t remember

what day it is—

 

when you can’t leave the driveway,

can’t leave the blacktop,

when it’s too wet to plow

 

for weeks at a time

as the creek rises and falls

with Atmospheric Rivers.

 

The finches bring branches

of dry debris, Roadrunners

chaunt solicitous love songs

 

despite the divine disasters

that temper mortal urgencies

a week away from the Equinox.

 

 

 

SHELTERED IN PLACE

 

 

                        Highwater debris,

                        enough to measure peak flow

                        gauging stations miss.

 

We’ve begun naming creeks

that flood the dry draws,

pull nominees from our histories

while exchanging guffaws.

 

We have become the helpless

prisoners of the weather,

of flatland floods and saturated mud,

resisting cabin fever.

 

Roads and fences, trees to cut,

our work comes to a halt—

no need to fuss, cows don’t need us

with water, grass and salt.

 

 

DESERT DUELLER

 

 

We never quite know

how our negligence

is ultimately received.

 

Somewhere upstream,

a tire too close to the creek,

became humor and irony

 

tumbling downstream

to balance and settle

with the flood debris—

 

a perfect amount

of seasoning for

a State of Emergency.

 

Cleaning Culverts

With a break in the weather, we, with the help of our neighbors and their equipment, began addressing the plugged culverts that were spilling flood water across Dry Creek Rd. Though we had cleaned the debris from this culvert after the first Atmospheric River, it became impacted with sand with subsequent rains. Essentially, the culvert is too small for these kinds of events and with so many flooding issues in Tulare County, we are low on their priority list.

All in all, we cleaned out three culverts yesterday, two of which have needed attention for years. The weathermen have downgraded the amount of rain to expect in coming days, but on top of the 1,000 cfs already flowing down Dry Creek canyon, its impact rides with the intensity of those rains.

We’re ready as we can be and doing what we can without getting off the asphalt and getting stuck.

Damages Between Storms

 

Another 1.58″ in the last 24 hrs., 2-day total 3.79″, forecast of 4+” through Wednesday, 3/15.

  1. Both sets of brush catchers caught hell and will have to be replaced.  Eroded far bank, widened channel.

      2. Pipe fence we recently built to the creek acted like a brush catcher and is lying flat.

      3 & 4. Culvert on Ridenhour Creek couldn’t handle the flow, wiped out fence and gate braces.

Lots of hillside sloughing on Dry Creek Rd, plugged culverts everywhere.  Road closed.  Greater damages to surrounding roads and small towns, Woodlake, Exeter, Elderwood.  

We’re fine.

 

 

 

 

Dry Creek: March 10, 2023 Video

1:00 p.m. @ our driveway