Category Archives: Ranch Journal

Fourth of July Fireworks

 

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We’ve been watching a pair of Roadrunners building a nest in a nearby cottonwood, what appear to be last May’s juveniles. Though we knew we had at least two hatches each year, we assumed both were from adult birds.

There is nothing scientific about our observations, no tags or names and we are not inclined to build blinds, put cameras on tripods and wait in 100 plus degrees to prove a point. Fortunately this was not a quick exercise, allowing time to go into the house last evening to get the camera with my 400 mm lens to catch this pair still engaged.

 

Lightning

 

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Last evening, a small lightning strike just before, dark half-mile from the house, as monsoonal moisture sailed up the west side of the Sierras. Easily accessible, we count our blessings.

 

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Neighbor Tony Rivas had the fire pretty-much corralled with his shovel by the time I arrived with the skid steer. Another neighbor, Chuck Fry, had the gates unlocked for the CDF insuring we didn’t have to fix fence when the fire was out. Still flashing in the mountains this morning, 0.09″ rain.

 

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RAILROAD 2015

 

October 29, 2010

October 29, 2010

 

June 27, 2015

June 27, 2015

 

Built for more than the cattle needed,
I reflect upon my one extravagance
now dry and cracked around its edges

like discarded dreams, having shed all guilt
exchanged for emptiness and worry
when every trail leads to Railroad Spring.

 

EMPTY PEN

 

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A hundred and ten degrees
in an empty pen
where we watched him
stumble to his feet,

where we forget
twenty years of trying—
that a man was king
with all he needed

to get the job done.
Time swallows memory
like a snake
chokes a meal down

to the present tense—
outliving horses
before we fade
from this landscape.

We can ask too much,
plead for compassion
from invisible gods,
compensation for

the heroic hearts
we have held
within our fingers,
within our family.

                                        for Red Hot Montana

 

RED HOT MONTANA, RIP

 

March 12, 1990 — June 25, 2015

 

a.k.a. "Red"

a.k.a. “Red”

 

Montana Doc x Easter Chex

 

Water, Water, Water

 

Greasy Cove, Lake Kaweah June 17, 2015

Greasy Cove, Lake Kaweah
June 17, 2015

Capacity: 185,000 acre feet
Irrigation water stored June 23, 2015: 50,905 acre feet
Kaweah River Flow, June 24, 2015: 546 cfs (cubic feet/second)

 

Roughly speaking, 25% of normal.

 

Weather Journal/2010-11

June 27, 2011

Greasy Cove, Lake Kaweah, 6.27.11

Lake Kaweah, behind Terminus Dam, has only 4-5 more feet to go to get to the reservoir’s high-water mark. The river peaked at about 5,600 cfs for an hour on June 16th, but for 24 hours, cumulatively, June 22nd recorded the highest flow amid four 100º days. Currently about 2,200 cfs inflow to Lake Kaweah, 2,100 cfs outflow. Dry Creek has dropped to 14 cfs, but a lot of water yet for this time of year.

 

NOT KNOWING

 

Late June, water scarce for cows
heavy with September’s calf
reclining like hippos in the shade

of thin-leafed oaks. On vacation,
gathered to catch a breeze, they
gossip silently, chew their cuds.

They don’t know, don’t worry,
watch us scurry from the distant
well to tank to empty trough—

listen to us talk with tools
as the morning’s entertainment.
Miles from asphalt, we make

our circles on dirt tracks
from pasture to pasture until
the rains might come November.

 

SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY QUAIL

 

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They learn early
to be a covey,
to stick together
and look out
for one another—

where Bobcat walks
and Hawk waits
on a bare branch,
where water is
before they die.

 

THE GIRLS

 

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Horseback, the girls work
cattle in the dust, sort cows
from calves before hauling

off the hill to the weaning pen:
a quiet dance to a rhythm
I can only see through boards

as cows ask with their eyes
before moving towards the open
space a horse has made

to leave their calves behind.
No loud bravado spurring
pirouettes into dirt clouds.

I turn away and walk
to the pickups and goosenecks—
remove my maleness

from these corrals that hold
a hundred years of urgent
echoes: men making mistakes

to invent new profanities.
Instead, the perfect sense
of girls instructing girls.

 

SOLSTICE DREAMS, 2015

 

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My pagan sunrise hangs over the black ridge
reaching for the saddle this side of Sulphur
Peak with blinding light, this native place

where women healed themselves—to endure
this longest day of hundred degree heat.
Each day shorter, we move with confidence

towards October, imagine gusts beneath
dark clouds that bring the storm gods closer
to bless this dry and dusty dirt with rain.