Category Archives: Ranch Journal

SURPRISE RAIN

Posted on March 10, 2024 by John | 3 comments

Mud from head to toe
before the bus to school,
how could I know

I’d never bring it home—
never be the hero
of black and white westerns.

But a lifetime chasing rainbows
has been enough
without the pot of gold.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal

Tagged Dry Creek, photography, poetry, rain, rainbows, weather

WAITING ON A BLUE EVENING

Posted on February 19, 2024 by John | 3 comments

Despite the advance of new scientific instruments utilized for weather modeling, this year’s Atmospheric River phenomenon for Central California hasn’t followed predictions. However, we have enjoyed beautiful weather and average rainfall standing currently at 10 inches with March and April yet to go. Last summer seemed cooler, fall and winter warmer with yesterday’s high reaching 71 degrees.

Robbin snapped this photo about the time the deluge was forecast to arrive yesterday evening, but it didn’t start raining until 3:00 this morning. I love the rainy days, almost always smug when the experts are wrong.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Atmospheric Rivers, forecasting, photography, rain, weather

BODY BURNING DETAIL

Posted on February 14, 2024 by John | 2 comments

Arms shrunk to seal flippers

Charred buttocks thrust skyward

They burned for five days.

– Bill Jones (“The Body Burning Detail”)

The tangle of limbs piled

like Bill’s poem from Nam,

oak skeletons and cadavers

turned hard and brittle

ache from drought,

rings parched of memory,

native history become ash

up in smoke. Perhaps my years

personify the tree, allow

empathy for these witnesses

to wild centuries before the West

was tamed, offering acorn meal

and shade for cattle,

ever-tuned to the telepathic

as they chew their cuds.

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal

Tagged "Blood Trails", burn piles, dead standing oaks, Drought, Dry Creek, Fire, personification, photography, poetry

REVISITING RIP VAN WINKLE

Posted on February 2, 2024 by John | 2 comments

Flash after flash above

a steely barrage of pellets—

an opaque torrent of gray rain

cut by the crack of thunder

as if the gods were falling timber

or sawing logs—

or just inebriated

in the mountains

playing nine pins.

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, Ranch Journal

Tagged Atmospheric River, Dry Creek, lightning, photography, Pineapple Express, poetry, rain, thunder, weather

Atmospheric Rivers Clean-Up

Posted on January 24, 2024 by John | Leave a comment

With a couple of “burn days” between rain showers this week, we’ve lit the piles of debris and deadfall that settled here where the canyon widens that were brought down with last spring’s atmospheric rivers. With air quality a concern in the San Joaquin Valley, burn days can be hard to come by. Not only are we reducing hazardous fuel in the event of a wildfire, but eliminating the limbs, mostly sycamore that burn quickly compared to oak, we saved our watergap fences between pastures and neighbors when Dry Creek rises again. Lastly, we’ve eliminated a potential logjam at McKay’s Point where part of the Kaweah River is diverted to the St. John’s fork that ultimately passes north of Visalia.

Another Bunch Branded

Posted on January 10, 2024 by John | Leave a comment

Beautiful day on Dry Creek, good friends, good help.

CRUSADES

Posted on January 7, 2024 by John | 6 comments

Caravans of SUVs, militarily spaced in case one gets lost,

race up our pocked-marked and decomposing mountain road

on Fridays to Hartland and Hume Lake Christian camps

to thin, clean air and worship exposed to cedars and pines

only to return Sunday afternoons as if God were driving

irresponsibly—an ascension of modern day crusaders

sprinting with a gang of jeeps, retrofitted for climbing rocks

and spinning hookers in the melting snow, the whir

and hum of mud-grips from miles below. Always

casualties, strapped to the backs of tow trucks home.

6 Comments

Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal

Tagged Dry Creek, photography, poetry

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Posted on January 1, 2024 by John | 12 comments

I’s been a great week between Christmas and New Years with Robbin’s brother Joe here to help out cutting wood, splitting oak, hanging gates, cleaning-up the Horehound, Turkey Mullein and tumbleweeds along the driveway, not to mention vehicle maintenance while getting 0.34″ slow rain that has revitalized our green. We’ve taken time-out around the BBQ fire pit with Bloody Mary’s and a Mexican Coffee to celebrate our accomplishments.

Though I would have liked the rain to come a month earlier, the weather’s been perfect, rain spaced well with warm temperatures as the canyon has turned from blond dry feed to green. The cows and calves have moved to the softened ground uphill to get a bite of both as we watch the virgin Red Angus bulls, close-by, fumbled their way to breeding postures. As Robbin quips, “It’s a wonder we get any calves at all.”

This is what we work for, an uncertain future, and wish you all a joyful 2024 !!