Tag Archives: Dry Creek

DRY CREEK

Posted on December 15, 2014 by John | 18 comments

December 18, 2010

If you want to feel whole again
sit with the creek and its meanderings
through the old sycamores here
before the Europeans landed
from another world
with new constraints and foreign religions
made to fit people and landscapes.

With this vein full in her flesh
flowing beneath green canopies
from shadows into light,
the canyon drinks
from yesterday’s dark clouds
as it reaches for the sky—
yearning for the source.

Lifeblood of the Bird and Animal People,
of the Yokuts and cattlemen,
it flows the same
when and where it wants—
washing the weak downstream,
yet bringing solace and sustenance
to those who can wait.

18 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014

Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, rain, water, weather, wildlife, Yokuts

IDES OF DECEMBER 2014

Posted on December 14, 2014 by John | 3 comments

Coffee and cigarettes in the cold outside,
counting cattle on the hillside, black dots
on green, we wait for the sun to rise—

to break through the fringe skeletons
of oaks atop the ridge with blinding shards
of light. I lean into the shadow of the post

that holds the beam and roof together,
edging north towards the Solstice
most mornings in December, unless

it’s raining blurry streaks of gray
from a dark sky. Half-dressed sycamores
await the creek to run again, flash bare limbs

before the dancing tangle of nymphs
and hobgoblins. In the middle of a miracle,
I am awash with it while staying dry.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal

Tagged Blue Oak, Drought, Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, rain, sunrise, sycamores, weather

Burrowing Owl

Posted on December 12, 2014 by John | 11 comments

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.

11 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged birds, Burrowing Owl, Dry Creek, photographs, wildlife

FROM WHEREVER

Posted on December 11, 2014 by John | Leave a comment

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.

CHANGE

Posted on December 10, 2014 by John | 4 comments

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.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal

Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, rain, red sky, water, weather

Gathering the Paregien Ranch

Posted on December 9, 2014 by John | 6 comments

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.

6 Comments

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

CYCLES AND ORBITS

Posted on December 7, 2014 by John | Leave a comment

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.