I dreamed I went upriver
on young legs until the roar
of snowmelt over boulders
shrank into a meadow
stream lined with pines—
going back in time.
Nothing has changed
the blackened rings,
the chiseled peaks beneath
a blue, blue sky—
and I am small again,
but with older eyes.
Where will our children go
when they get old at night?
What will they follow
to find themselves
content to be
engulfed in awe?
On our tour of Greasy last Saturday, Robbin and I noticed that the Golden Poppies on Sulphur Ridge had been replaced by a sizeable patch something purple. I emailed a photo to Earl McKee, who grew up, ran cattle and owned the Greasy Creek Ranch before selling it to our family. Legs too old and Sulphur too steep for a look closer than a telephoto lens, I asked to see if he knew what the light purple flowers were.
Looks like the wild lavender has taken over the beautiful poppies, as planned. As Carlyle Homer used to say “I like them pretty l’il purple flowers that come out towards the end of the grass season!”
When ever I see that “Ol Laurel Patch” up there on the side of Sulphur Mountain, it brings back many of my younger days buck huntin’ with my Dad all over the face of Sulphur. It was right in those Laurels that my Dad and I and Joe Chinowith were leading our horses (in about 1946). Joe was following behind a young bronc my Dad was leading, and slipped in the wild oats and fell too close, and that bronc kicked Ol’ Joe and broke his leg!
As I recall, Joe was ridin’ “Ol Lep” who was real gentle, and we carefully loaded Joe on him and led him off of that mountain. I remember Joe’s face being white with pain all the way to the Exeter Hospital.
Thanks John for making my day with familiar scenes from the past.
Players & Places:
Joe Chinowith—Indian cowboy who worked for my grandfather.
Carlyle Homer—Dry Creek cattleman
Sulphur Ridge—elevation over 3,000 feet and 3 hours from Exeter in 1946
Earl McKee—best damned storyteller I’ve ever known.
Naturally, I looked ‘wild lavender’ up on Calflora with no luck, but like so many wildflowers, the botanists forgot to check with the old timers before they gave them latin names. I then tried the family Lamiaceae, and by process of elimination it appears that these wildflowers are known as Horse Mint or Nettle Leaf Giant Hyssop, Agastache urticifolia . It’s such a pleasure learning something new everyday.
Thousands of friendly faces,
family reunions camped
on grassy slopes and swales
waiting in the wild
since the rains came.
The guests of honor pause
in calm disbelief, dismount
and crawl among them
to take a good long look
at spring.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged Golden Brodiaea, photography, poetry, Pretty Faces, Triteleia ixioides, wildflowers
Posted in Haiku 2016, Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged haiku, photography, poetry, rare and endangered, wildflowers
To circumnavigate
the granite entwined as one
to bathe in sunshine.
~
On reconnaissance to ostensibly assess the native feed in order to decide when we will begin weaning our calves, Robbin and I spent a delightful day in Greasy yesterday. With more grass than cattle, it wasn’t the amount of grass, but its maturity we were judging between several camera stops and a quick snack with a clan of cows and calves. Though some wildflowers have been conspicuously absent this spring, like popcorn flowers, most have flourished while competing with the tall grass.
Posted in Haiku 2016, Photographs, Poems 2016
Tagged Dichelostemma volubile, photography, poetry, Twining Brodiaea, wildflowers
I could have been born a bird
on a gravel island in the creek,
learn to hide in a small world
before I found the gentle grace
to fly, hop rock to rock
as mother drew intruders off
with shoreline flaps of her white
petticoats, feigning injury,
crying seriously in low circles.
I could have been born a bird
without certainty, without worries
about my death or taxes.
Once touched, all made clear
by the angel’s showered jewels
shimmering with truth.
Posted in Haiku 2016, Photographs
Tagged flower-friday, haiku, Ithuriel's Spear, photography, poetry, Triteleia laxa, wildflowers
We were talking conservation easement
restrictions, all the rules for a cash
injection to hold the ranch together
into the future, terms and acronyms
for multisyllabic concepts applied
to ground grazed for a century
and a half, nice young girl and I,
when the deal broke over cordwood,
dead-standing Blue Oaks for our woodstove—
peckerwood in perpetuity. My good
intentions shot full of holes,
I am relieved with each one I see.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged conservation easement, photography, poetry
After the war,
hats and horses,
black and white heroics
helped us forget
Hitler and Hiroshima,
helped heal and shape
half of humanity hooked
on Hollywood cowboys.
I lived close to the stars,
slept near the fire,
drank from a stream
of tomorrows
that have arrived
twenty thousand times
working towards
this moment in a poem:
glimpses of reckless youth
and luck at the Longbranch
replaced by another tribe
of younger men
wild, woolly and tough.
With each wind-whipped rumor,
I worry more about them
than I did myself.
Slow to leave after
a night rain, the clouds still want
to party at dawn.
drycrikjournal 