Category Archives: Photographs

That peaceful earth, the one with open
arms, meadows, peaks and streams
to stage our dreams—within a perfect

backdrop tucked away from urgency
compressed, gridlock escapes and dark
alley nightmares—we love and lust

for her, believing she will always be
to receive our desperate wanting, that
she has not changed, that she is not

the same woman who quakes with fury,
spews fire and storms fear wherever
she wants, for whatever reason, whim

or consequence. She is alive, a human
goddess trying to hold it together
under pressures to be reckoned with.

August 10, 2011

from Weather Journal 2011-12:

64° this a.m. Slight weather change with wispy, mare’s manes and tails, clouds all day – the kind of sign that would indicate a rain in two or three days if this were December, but not. High temp around 95°, so no BIG change. Dry Creek is still running (3 cfs), and our stockwater springs have really picked up, some ponds running out their spillways for the first time in a couple of months. The springs’ connection to the Sierra snowmelt seems obvious, taking until August leak down to us in the foothills. The days are also noticeably shorter.

I don’t remember Dry Creek ever running this late into the summer, and now we are approaching the time of year that the riparian, mostly sycamores and Valley Oaks, stop taking water. Not too many years ago, Dry Creek began running in early December without any rains and runoff to contribute to its flow, just as a result of the trees beginning to go dormant. As long as there’s water in the channel, anything can happen, but three or four 100+ degree days in a row, it’ll be done. I seriously doubt that the creek will run all year, but we’ll keep tabs in the Weather Journal.

Zach, Clarence, Bob and Robbin got the steers to the corrals ahead of this morning’s sun to be weighed, sorted and loaded for Kersey, Colorado. A slow and easy shipping day, the steers weighed-up well, more than we anticipated when we sold them on the internet. A few cutbacks and loose ends to clean-up before new calves starting hitting the ground next month, we are pleased with our past year’s work.

Roaring River Falls @ S. Fork of the Kings River

South Fork of the Kings

Robbin & I got away for a couple of nights to visit friends, Tim & Maggie Loverin at the Cedar Grove Pack Station. River still too high to really fish, but we strung up our flyrods anyway.

(Click to enlarge)

americanflagpictures.net

The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
                        – Emerson, “Self Reliance,” Essays First Series (1841)

The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself.
                        – Walt Whitman, Preface to the “Leaves of Grass” (1855)

Independence is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong.
                        – Nietzsche, “Beyond Good and Evil” (1886)

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
                        – George Bernard Shaw, “Maxims for Revolutionists,” Man and                         Superman (1903)

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
                        – Einstein, “Out of My Later Years” (1950)