One of the guys I ran into on the way up into the Greasy watershed was this Burrowing Owl. I haven’t seen one on the ranch for several years, in part because they keep moving their colonies. I’ve run into this a owl a couple of times at the intersection of Pogue Canyon and the Mankin Flat Fire Road in past months, even hunted him with a camera once with no success. Yesterday, I caught him early in the morning with the point and shoot. Funny, funny little fellows.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged birds, Burrowing Owl, Dry Creek, photographs, wildlife
He was headed up the road smiling,
wearing a short-sleeved 1950s Hawaiian shirt—
a faded, light print on heavy, coarse muslin
with cuffs—happy with heaven or
from wherever he’d come.
He had time, an eternity—
wanted to see the barren heifers
you grain-fed, killed and gutted,
see the color of the fat—stopped-in
to ask me to go with him.
Years mean nothing in a dream.
We can replay, edit as we like,
take time-outs to maneuver the maze
of surprise details and survive
the fears we’ve disguised wide awake.
Some of the close ones arrive to reassure us
that they are well after escaping life—
that all we had hoped for them,
and they for themselves, exists within—
and from wherever they’ve come.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged DREAMS, Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, red sky
Day breaks into rafts of red,
early weather precursors for sailors
and shepherds in any shade
this side of the Sierras
as the sun bathes Nevada
with long shadows.
How we crave the changing
light on green, yellow willows
set afire as white-limbed sycamores
undress beside the creek—
how we need the miracle
of moisture to hold us altogether
before this ballyhooed
Storm of the Century lands
somewhere north of here.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, rain, red sky, water, weather
Across Dry Creek Canyon, a light dusting of snow on the Kaweahs and the Great Western Divide, from Alta Peak to Sawtooth, as we gathered yesterday to brand today on the Paregien Ranch.
Almost solid filaree in places, we’ve had a good germination in the granite at the 2,000 foot elevation. Not a lot of grass, but better than in the clay at the lower elevations, our south and west slopes still struggling.
Clarence and I watch the gate as the girls feed hay where the cows and calves will spend the night. None of our facilities is air tight, so we hope they’ll still be in the pen when we get there this morning.
Lee, Teri, Robbin and Clarence replay a good gather.
Forecast rain for Thursday and Friday, we’re hoping to get the calves worked while we can still get up and down the road.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Alta Peak, branding, Calves, cows, Dry Creek, Dry Creek Canyon, Great Western Divide, Kaweah, Paregien Ranch, photographs, rain, weather
We float like leaves—
moments balanced
between extremes
we haven’t seen—
for small epiphanies:
the intersections
of imperfect circles,
elliptical orbits
of other planes
and gravities.
Season to season,
we float like leaves
as fodder for the earth
returning to the roots
and the skeletons of trees.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged cycles, Dry Creek, epiphany, leaves, photographs, poetry, roots, trees, weather, wildlife
What has become of us,
O’ Humanity,
quick to fire
at silhouettes in shadows,
raw anger mobbing
thoroughfares,
wars everywhere?
We need a holiday
off—a truce,
some space and peace
with this economy—
time to care.
An early Christmas wish,
a common gift
we all can share.
Rare October Redbud bloom
summoned Monarchs,
began a two-year drought.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, haiku, Monarch Butterfly, photographs, poetry, Redbud, weather, weekly-photo-challenge, wildflowers, wildlife
A man builds a house around a fire,
rocks and hearth upon the earth—
cuts wood to feed it, to stand close
to the flame when cold to the bone—
a luxury: he gets in touch
with the basics, with the tree.
Sometimes he says a little prayer
for the century felled or fallen,
or nods to hardwood cores intact
all his long life, stacking brush
for quail, cleaning up for grass
and cattle, like we’ve never been here.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Blue Oak, Dry Creek, firewood, photographs, poetry, wildlife
Black, no stars—a mist before the storm
stacks-up against the Sierra Nevadas—
rises and rains just in time for grass
struggling with hard, thirsty clay.
We, too, have grown hard
with no deep moisture, roots dry
and brittle as the Live Oaks offering
boughs full of brown medallions.
The problem bears have moved
to town, followed the Kaweah
down into backyards and alleys,
packs of hungry coyotes behind them.
Slow and gentle would be best
for the red, south and west slopes,
any kind of puddles for the flats—
but whatever we get, we’ll like it ☺
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, Kaweah, photographs, poetry, rain, Sierra Nevadas, water, weather, wildlife, Wood Ducks
Coffee at dawn, drumming
the Honey Locust—
old men talk, listening.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged birds, Dry Creek, garden, haiku, photographs, poetry, Red-Breasted Sapsucker, wildlife
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