No other love song, only
the comforting sound of fury
rumbling, rolling, churning
upstream like an old lover
returning to hold and stay
awhile with sycamores,
waist-deep, remembering
the boy with single-shot .410
reaching from the far bank
for dove in the top limbs
before the floods of ’67 & ’69
enveloped them, before
our high-water kisses in ’97
shared tears with rain—pure
ecstasy after so long dry.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2017
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, photography, poetry, rain, weather
10:00 a.m., January 8, 2017: 629 cfs
Not quite the storm of the decade, Dry Creek peaked at 1,390 cfs early yesterday morning. As of this morning, accumulated rainfall since the first of the year on lower Dry Creek has been a little over 4 inches, with yet another storm forecast to bring about 1.5″ due midday tomorrow—all welcome.
The continual gray clouds and rain of late seems miraculous when contrasted with the bare hills and dust of the past four years that have been permanently imprinted in our minds as more normal than not. The drought changed our thought processes and how we operate the ranch. And despite the ample availability of water streaming in nearly every canyon, I have often caught myself still worrying about stockwater. It’s how we lived, day to day, for a long time.
It’s good to see the creek running, the literal lifeblood of the canyon, a psychological lift as we inhale the moist air and relax a little before addressing the work that waits ahead of us. We have calves to brand and watergaps to fix as soon as we can physically get to them, when the roads dry out and creek goes down, which probably won’t be until next week if tomorrow’s storm materializes.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, photography, rain, water, weather
With ample warnings from various sources, we’ve been preparing for more rain. Wednesday and Thursday brought 1.5” here on Dry Creek which peaked @ 233 cfs Wednesday night—all quite tame—so far. The ground was saturated after 5” of rain in December, a third of our average annual rainfall, and most all of what may be coming our way will end up as runoff.
The byword all week has been ‘atmospheric river’ with various amounts of rain forecast for the next ten days that range from 5-15”. Low snow levels in our Sierra Nevada mountains down to 4,000’ from the last storm, now await a large warm storm slated to arrive tomorrow morning and last through Monday with rain up to an elevation of 9,000’, bringing the real risk of some downstream flooding.
Though the high-end rainfall projections may be hearsay from the local doughnut shop, they spark memories of past years when we weren’t able to cross Dry Creek for weeks. Speculating beyond that is unnecessary, but the beekeeper who parks his hives along the creek for the winter moved them all to higher ground last night.
What we do know is that the Dry Creek channel is laden with deadfall since the last four years of drought, with many dead-standing oaks and sycamores along its banks. The last channel-cleaning was in 1997 when Dry Creek peaked near 7,000 cfs and tipped the brush catchers over across from the house. We can be sure that every barbwire watergap between neighbors and pastures will be gone, cattle free to graze the canyon from Badger to Lemon Cove and points beyond.
This morning we’ll be cleaning gutters and culverts, testing the backup generator, and ensuring that our cows and calves, that have yet to be branded, won’t be trapped on the wrong side of the creek. It may be one of those years when the calves are big and help from the neighbors hard to come by, but we’re all in the same boat—launching tomorrow.
Appropriately, my hand-dyed ‘tenugui’ arrived just ahead of a string of storms from Japan to California that are predicted to deliver five inches of rain beginning this evening through January 9th. A gift from Evelynne Matsumoto that “seems to bring rain in Japan” depicts Raijin, the mythical deity of thunder and lightening and Fujin, the deity of the wind. Having the rain and the Raijin tenugui arrive at the same time is no more inexplicable and astonishing than reconnecting with Evelynne, my babysitter of sixty-five years ago—just full of magic.
As followers of my poetry know, I am easily susceptible to the notions of special gods and goddesses for rain, and subsequently intrigued by the 100s of deities that are revered and recognized in traditional Japanese culture. By comparison our culture today will never be as rich or lasting.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Living where we work, our exposure and resistance to ever-evolving, human contagions is limited. And though our immune systems may be naïve, we’re seldom sick. But since a busy Christmas here with family, kids and grandkids, Robbin and I remained sequestered at home to ring in the New Year by counting our blessings after each barrage of consecutive sneezes.
NEW YEAR’S EVE 2017
Self-medicating between bouts
of consecutive sneezes
and my repeated gesundheits,
your eyes raised to invisible lines
of poetry you’ve been writing
in the kitchen that you squint
to read, and then erase,
edit with a fingertip:
family gifts at Christmas
multiplied as germs exchanged
from big box malls to stockings full
all-across America—and more
you couldn’t decipher
or I can’t remember, trying
anything to get better.
Rough Fire – July 28, 2015
The beauty of things—the beauty of transhuman things
Without which we are lost.
– Robinson Jeffers (“Granddaughter”)
I claim the disheveled refuge of age
addled by magic devices beyond
the amalgamation of basic elements,
the dirt and water, the living foundation
from which we spring and are akin,
intriguing as a relative to trees that dance
and rocks that talk about the past,
solid and lasting. A balancing act:
my slow retreat just short of the attic
I am promised, mercifully sequestered
‘Someday Soon’ with Ian’s tune.
I want blaring sing-alongs to leave upon!
I’d be down that road in a cloud of smoke
For some land that I ain’t bought bought bought
– Guy Clark (“L.A. Freeways”)
photo: Jaro Spichal
I steal a look into the blurry morning mirror
after a second cup of coffee: a gray Medusa-do
replacing decades of darker curiosities
that recollect the Brylcreem coifs, the forelock
dip, loose strands dangling like my connection
to rock and roll—to the replaceable, double-A hearts
of Ricky and Elvis inside my Zenith transistor
a long ways from town—from the here and now
before I turn away from the worn-out look
that chuckles back at me. But this is the way
to wake up to reality, like Perseus, with only
quick glances into Athena’s shiny shield.
photo: Jaro Spichal
Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself
a distant place.
– T’ao Ch’ien (“Drinking Wine”)
We have been there, idling across pastures
like cattle to ridgetops with focused eye
turned blurry with the mind’s appeal to wander—
an easy trek in open space, we gravitate
to isolated places where granite rocks
take the shape of animals, where oak trees
dance with sweeping boughs and speak
a language without words we comprehend.
When we come home to flesh, to the clatter
and complicated clutter of more mortal busyness,
our senses shocked and fogged with dismay,
we become the aliens for a moment on this planet
returning with translations, with fresh offerings
of peace and poetry—we nod to all the animals,
leaving little gifts of good-will along the way.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, Home, photography, poetry
Fresh-picked fruit waiting for family, friends and rain to arrive. 1.30″
Like quail before a rain, like deer
we gather in the granite brush
that yet survives the times and us—
around a fire. Lift a water glass
to the first ones here, a jam jar to
the pioneers that spawned this bond
of swirling smoke we nose at dawn
within our clothes and grin, trying:
to remember when
we loved life, or one another more.
drycrikjournal 