Tag Archives: Rough Fire

I don’t recall a more-welcome fall, this astronomical landmark when our daylight hours equal dark and night promises to last longer as we move towards the Winter Solstice. The sun slides south down the ridge, rising later, as sunset doesn’t hesitate, but literally falls into Antelope Valley just to the west of us.

We have endured the summer, we have endured four years of drought, as we enter that time of year when it might rain, bring green grass and fill the earth with moisture, bring water to our cattle. Wildlife walks with a different air, lingering longer in the morning. Coyotes and bobcats take their time as if they own this ground. Perhaps displaced by the Rough Fire, we’ve already seen more lions and bears than any year I can remember.

This is the time of year when our calves are born, the beginning of another cycle with the hope of rain, green grass, and fat calves, mornings and evenings by the fire. Just another day, but this is the one we have waited for.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged astronomy, autumnal equinox, beginning, dark, light, Rough Fire

Rough Fire: Evacuation Orders Lifted

Posted on September 16, 2015 by John | 3 comments

139,000+ acres
49% containment

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Rough Fire

Miramonte

Posted on September 13, 2015 by John | 4 comments

The prospect of having to gather this country ahead of the Rough Fire is daunting.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Miramonte, Rough Fire

Smoke in the Valley

Posted on September 12, 2015 by John | 15 comments

7:20 a.m., Sept. 11, 2015

Smoke continues to get worse throughout the Valley as the Rough Fire moves within a mile of the 2,000 year-old General Grant Tree and grove of giant Sequoias, also threatening the communities of Wilsonia and Pinehurst as it moves up the Mill Creek drainage, and towards the town of Dunlap on the western edge of the fire. Currently consuming 128,000 acres in the Kings River watershed with only 29% containment, the fire is expected to burn rapidly through the drought and pine beetle impacted timber today. Cost to date to fight the fire, that began with a single tree struck by lightening on July 31st, approaches $80 million. 2,570 personnel, 14 helicopters and 18 dozers battle the blaze in rough terrain.

Mandatory evacuation orders have kept Dry Creek Road busy. We helped haul four gooseneck loads of horses and mules from Miramonte yesterday, the last of the stock removed from the Cedar Grove Pack Station ahead of the fire that now burns upcanyon past Hotel Creek and towards Granite Lake. Park and pack station structures were saved.

Miramonte – 10:00 a.m., September 11, 2015

Cooler weather is forecasted after today and into next week that should help firefighting efforts.

Rough Fire

15 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Cedar Grove Pack Station, Giant Sequoias, Grant Grove, Rough Fire

OPENING

Posted on September 11, 2015 by John | 3 comments

For a moment,
we succumb,
give in, yield

to our senses,
to the unknown—
forgetting everyone

we have been
or may ever be—
to let each second

wash over us
as we consume
each detail

that becomes
our flesh melting
into timelessness

gone beyond
any hope
to hold its shape,

waiting to explore
that prolonged moment
as if in the womb again.

Rough Fire

3 Comments

Posted in Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

Tagged Rough Fire

The Farmers Almanac vs. El Niño Predictions

Posted on September 10, 2015 by John | 5 comments

Pacific Southwest Summary:

Although the early part of the winter season will feature above normal rainfall, the drought will continue as rainy periods will diminish in the season’s second half and precipitation will be below-normal for the winter season as a whole, with below-normal mountain snows not helping ease the drought. The stormiest periods will be in mid- to late November, early to mid-December, early January, and early March. Overall, temperatures will be slightly cooler than normal. The coldest period will be in late December, with other cold periods in early and late January and mid-February.

April and May will be cooler and slightly rainier than normal.

Summer will be hotter than normal, with near-normal rainfall. The hottest periods will be in early June, early to mid- and late July, and early to mid- and late August.

September and October will be slightly cooler than normal, with near-normal rainfall.

Facing continued smoke from the Rough Fire and 110 degrees before week’s end, we’re looking forward to the end of summer.

5 Comments

Posted in Ranch Journal

Tagged El Niño, Rough Fire, weather

STEAMING

Posted on August 29, 2015 by John | 3 comments

From my desk window, I watch the fire
where the far ridge drops into the next
watershed, Rio de los Santos Reyes,

to follow mushrooming thunder cells
billow white as backfires collide:
cedar, fir, pine and redwood up in smoke

late afternoons and imagine the heat
and trees exploding, smudged yellow
Nomex—men, and women too, on the fire line,

exhausted and bleary-eyed as the red tails
of air tankers sail back and forth over me.
Sixty thousand acres plus of back country

charred by a living, breathing monster
twenty-five percent contained. The wind
has changed and cleared our canyon

as thunder cells push eastward up the Kings.
From the ridge and from the air they watched
a lightning strike run in the rocks

for over a week, thought it would never
jump both the river and the road—
could have put it out anytime.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

Tagged Rough Fire

Rough Fire from Dry Creek

Posted on August 29, 2015 by John | Leave a comment

August 28, 2015, 4:35 p.m.

60,000+ acres
25% containment
Rough Fire

Rough Fire Update 2

Posted on August 28, 2015 by John | 3 comments

August 27, 2015, 6:30 a.m.

57,000 acres
$32.5 million
25% containment

Fire continues to burn on both sides of Highway 180 and the South Fork of the Kings River, leaving rock slides from the steep granite walls that now block vehicular access to Cedar Grove and points beyond. Smoke so thick in Dry Creek Canyon, you can almost identify the wood that has burned by smell: pine, cedar, fir and redwood. We quit work early yesterday.