With her iPhone, Terri caught me measuring and ciphering 9.25” of rain since December 24th on the Paregien Ranch. That’s how long it’s been since we’ve seen our cattle, since the rains began in earnest at the 1st of the year. With 16.70” here on Dry Creek thus far, we have already surpassed our average annual rainfall for the season that generally ends on April 30th.
High cold wet fog after rain
puts a lid on summer’s cauldron
earth wet to rock, each crease
leaks rivulets into the canyon
to join a muddy creek.
Curiosity burns in his belly,
lone winter coyote edging closer
by different approaches
mid-day or night—
dogs hold him at bay
until he leaves the edge
of our territory.
Young downstream cowboys try
clay flat, pickup, gooseneck
just inside the gate, diggings
piled behind the drive wheels
as I pass by.
Twenty years ago
I’d have stopped to help
got stuck
and they learn nothing.
Two hours back from town
with a burn permit,
they’re hooking up
on muddy asphalt.
High cold wet fog after rain
creek too high to cross
I clear my desk, bag years
of paper files for proof
of our busyness
for the burn pile:
dry summer prunings
up in smoke
lost in fog.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2017, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, photography, poetry, weather, winter
Dry Creek is running over 500 cfs this morning @ 6:00 a.m., after over an inch of rain in the past two days, over 6” for the first half of January—10 consecutive days of measurable precipitation—it’s wet! Any plans to cross the creek to fix fences and sort cattle won’t happen today. Furthermore, the moisture is deep, a good thing, but the only vehicle we have to get to the fence work will be the Kubota and I’d prefer to wait until Dry Creek is running less than 100 cfs.
Oh, I know the stories when Earl McKee and his sorrel horse swam the channel to ride five miles to free cattle locked in his Greasy corrals; or Clarence Holdbrooks swimming his red horse to move cattle stranded on the other side of the creek fifty years ago. They are my heroes still. All we have at risk with our current cattle mix-up is that our replacement heifers are running with the neighbor’s steers, at a time of the month, unfortunately, when the majority will be cycling, yet not exposed to the Wagyu bulls. But no livestock is at risk.
According to the 10-day forecast, we have a 5-day window to dry out before the next series of storms begin on the 18th, then 5 more days projected to leave 2.5” of rain. But no one’s complaining, yet, no one’s hollered ‘uncle’.
Not unlike the drought, Robbin and I have been making contingency plans. It dawned on me last night that making a ranch work within all the variables of the weather requires some hands-on creativity—that the art of cattle ranching starts with thinking well-outside the box. C’est la vie!
Weekly Photo Challenge: ‘Ambience’
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, photography, poetry, rain, weather, weekly-photo-challenge
Too wet for us to get off the road or cross the creek, but Kaweah Delta was back on Dry Creek cleaning the lower brush catchers this morning before the next storm starts about 4 p.m., forecast to bring 1.5 – 2” of rain through Thursday. Dry Creek: 236 cfs. Operator: Erik Avila.
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
Dark theater, gentle applause
spreads from roof to balcony
beginning the Gig of the Decade
Janis Joplin at the Shrine,
all-electric, deafening wails
of agony and fury released
to storm the canyon, swell the creek
with memories: every rig hip-deep
in a frappé of clay, a daisy chain
of pickups and winches leapfrogging,
churning chocolate pudding
to the asphalt, warm woodstove
and loud whiskey replays
of how we learned the hard way.
Big Brother’s tuning-up
behind the black curtain,
yellow and green stage left
on the radar as we wait.
YouTube: ‘Maybe’
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
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.
No wet redwood reflection, I look past black morning,
scan the radar for a chance the last forecast stalled
before it got away to who-cares-where into the future
on the other side of the Sierras, then search for stars beyond
the gray for an out-of-habit game plan between rains:
soft warm earth too wet to work too far from home.
Forty years ago I slowed, took the Fowler exit off
Highway 99 for Madam Sophia’s neon sign of things
to come my way from the landscape of my palm:
low range of callouses spilling into the deep canyon
of my heart—she read both hands and lit a candle,
saw lots of water in my future and I was glad.
Dawn is gray above the green and last year’s bleached
dry feed, chorus line of sycamores undress white limbs,
show flesh between their rosy leaves to tease a good
hard rain to bring the creek to sweep its cobbled bed
of four-years’ deadfall in a rush to wipe out water gaps:
fixing fences into a future that’s not quite guaranteed.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, fences, Madam Sophia, photography, poetry, rain, water, weather
