Category Archives: Photographs

January Deer

Posted on January 15, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Because our count and fences are always suspect, Bob and I went back to the Top yesterday in the Kubota to make sure we got everything gathered Thursday, planning to brand on Monday. All we found were deer.

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BASIC FORECAST

Posted on January 14, 2011 by | Leave a comment

We know how it goes
after a storm, sometimes
wet fog clings for days,

weighs on the mind
when we can’t see out –
can’t feel the sun move

within us. The first light
white will blind us,
before the colors come

reaching for blue, blue
sky and cumulus sailing
into shapes we recognize.

And so it goes from dark
tempests and torrents,
before the lupine leafs

from bare sticks, before
its purple plumes wave
into the buzzing, warm

pulse that will fade
again with the sun – yet
no season, the same.

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2011

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Greasy Loop

Posted on January 11, 2011 by | 2 comments

Kaweah Watershed - January 10, 2011

The gray fog and low clouds clinging to these saturated foothills finally gave way to a little sunshine yesterday. This shot of the snowpack in the Kaweahs was taken from a ridge below Sulphur Peak. I attempted the loop in Greasy to check the cows and calves and to make certain that our bulls were still home working, and to assess the condition of our roads. It’s WET, water running, dribbling, oozing everywhere. With an accumulation since December 15th, our rain gauge overflowed, holding 12 inches when completely full – a lot of rain for this country in a little over two weeks.

Creek in the Road

I ran into the creek at the bottom of Sulphur, a part of the flow diverted into the road up the draw by limbs, leaves and debris that I was able to remove with a shovel and chainsaw. Remarkable runoff when one considers that the last significant rain occurred a week ago.

All the stock ponds are full and running out their spillways. I couldn’t complete my loop because the pond at Grapevine was going over the dam/road, and I had to backtrack through Sulphur to get off the mountain. Despite the cold on the Kubota, it was exhilarating to see some sun and cattle.

Slick - calves unbranded

(click photos to enlarge)

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Lemon Cove in the Rain

Posted on January 9, 2011 by | Leave a comment

April 3, 2006

These 2006 photographs caught my eye while looking for some color here, for something other than poetry, and even these gray shots of Lemon Cove lift my spirits. The fog, clinging to these saturated hills since the New Year, drizzles today, weighs heavy on the eyes and mind. We haven’t seen our cattle for a month, haven’t got a calf branded, ground too wet to get a pickup to them.

Clarence drove his Kawasaki Mule to the Paregien Ranch in the fog yesterday, choosing the cold and wet over pacing the house, to find the rain gauge full, roads sloughed and so wet, we’ll probably have to ride from Dry Creek to gather and brand them after a week or so of sunshine and no rain.

I haven’t been across the creek since our Corb Lund replay of ‘The Truck Got Stuck’ New Year’s morning with the birders, my son and the neighbors, since another inch and three-quarters rain. The work is stacking-up as we begin to think about Elko, wondering how we’re going to get it all done.

Lemon Cove Women's Club - April 3, 2006

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Blue Sky

Posted on January 3, 2011 by | Leave a comment

How good to see that the sky is still blue! We’ve logged another 1.76″ rain since New Year’s Day, extending our gray days to nearly three weeks straight.

Not one to be caught complaining about rain, we spent New Year’s morning reenacting Corb Lund’s The Truck Got Stuck when I went to winch the local Audubon, on their Christmas Bird Count, out of our ‘dobe Flat – getting stuck myself, and then my son’s truck come to rescue me, breaking a chain and a cable before we were able to send them on their way as it began to pour. Bob and I, still embedded in the clay, had to enlist the good nature of our neighbors, pickups winching, leapfrogging backwards, one after another out of the bog to terra firma.

Always humorous once you’re out of the mud, I emailed an audio clip of Corb’s song to Rob Hansen, group leader, who has since rewritten Corb’s lyrics to more accurately fit our landscape and circumstance. All’s well that ends well – no feeling more helpless than being stuck in the mud a long ways from the road home in the rain.

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The Challenge of Grace

Posted on January 2, 2011 by | Leave a comment

In the days when I was young, being older carried certain rewards like riding my bike, instead of the school bus, the two miles to town, having a shotgun or the freedom of a driver’s license – important hurdles to adulthood I anticipated clearing in my dreams, over and over, until they came true. Each New Year was like a birthday, getting closer to that magic 21!

Today, much of that anticipation wanes, its momentum coasting, yet the New Year still stands as a symbolic landmark in my life – and like a new leaf, it’s a chance for a fresh start. The covers of last year’s poetry are closed into a chapbook, and into a file, so I can begin anew, jettisoning the old stuff, looking forward to something better. Because the poetry is a parallel plane to living, this also means closing the covers on the clutter and the non-productive that has attached itself to me, or I to it, over the year(s). A time to trim down to help find my grace.

Cowmen over 60 are rare enough in 2011, but for any of us to find our grace, despite the friction in our joints, seems to be the ultimate challenge – to grin and go on like we could dance. So much of it is timing and gravity, the weight of those things we don’t need that keep us out of step with what’s happening. In retrospect, I can see the significance of each step and stumble, but now becoming so engrossed with what’s at my feet, I have to remind myself to look up to see where I’m going.

Robbin and I wish you all a New Year of Grace.

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Wet & Wild

Posted on December 29, 2010 by | Leave a comment

From the house at daylight, it looked as if Dry Creek had risen into the road, but just the little canyon to the north of our driveway that the culvert couldn’t handle after 2.12″ rain overnight. Every crease in the landscape is leaking – waterfalls everywhere.

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Merry Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Sulphur Peak - February 28, 2007

                           Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from Dry Creek !

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Rain 9 Days Straight

Posted on December 23, 2010 by | 2 comments


With nine consecutive mornings of measurable rainfall since December 15th, we’ve accumulated 6.53” of rain to bring us to 11.47” thus far this season – more rain than entire 2006-07 season, and about an inch away from the totals for the 2007-08 & 2008-09 seasons. Hearsay has it his that we’ve broken all rainfall records for this time of year, going back to the 1955 Christmas flood that I remember vividly. Looks like a little sun and blue sky today, a chance for the hawks and the rest of us to get our feathers dry.

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Faggioli Crossing

Posted on December 19, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Midway through this storm event, it’ll be awhile before we can cross Dry Creek. Oak and manzanita stacked in the dry, coffee on – just hunker down around the woodstove until it’s done. 2.05″ this morning at daylight. No cabin fever yet, but three more days to go.

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