One by one off trucks,
hooked or boomed into the barn
banked for the unknown.
Sweaty, sleeveless shirt, Dusty
Bohannon, until he died, unloaded
thousands of bob-tailed trucks
before the booms pitched bales inside,
before the squeezes stacked dumps up
for unknown winter times
like grounded vermin store
in tunneled chambers, or cackling birds
in fenceposts pecked with holes.
Posted in Haiku 2023, Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Acorns, Drought, photography, poetry, rain, weather, winter
The foothill poppies are beginning to show on our south slopes as temperatures hover near 70 degrees. The white popcorn flowers and orange fiddlenecks have begun to claim the gentler ground in what appears to be the beginning of a colorful wildflower year with the ample moisture (Atmospheric River) we received last month.
Beginning this evening, forecasts vary as temperatures drop into the low thirties with a cold front that will engulf California. Weathermen are predicting snow down to 1,000 feet, nearly 1,000 feet below this photograph. There is even some talk of fourteen inches of snow in Three Rivers. Furthermore, Weather Underground predicts rain on all but one day for the next two weeks.
The road to the Paregien ranch has just dried out and cleared of fallen trees, but we still haven’t been able to get to the calves to brand up there. We lost a month in time to the Atmospheric River in January, but two weeks of predicted rain with a week to dry out puts that branding into the middle of March at the soonest and our calves are almost too BIG to handle.
Nothing is certain in this business, but as a weather dependent livelihood we’ll have to be ready to adapt. (Cut another load of dead-standing Manzanita and Blue Oak yesterday, at least we should be warm).
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged photographs, poppies, rain, snow, spring, weather, wildflowers, winter
Dark morning chill stirs the flesh to welcome winter waiting for flaming tongues to lick between dry Manzanita branches igniting Blue oak in the woodstove’s glow. I recall storms, the floods and endless downpours, creek too high to cross for thirty days and pray for anything wet enough to start the grass for cows and calves— for my sanity, something akin to normal in these crazy days of politics and pandemic— something to trust as right as rain— something to believe in.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Tagged Calves, cows, pandemic, poetry, politics, rain, winter
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
I awake with chain saw eyes
measuring fallen trees:
to die of thirst,
dividends of drought
thick torsos with loose bark,
little brush to stack
to clear for grass,
to cover quail from hawks—
stove wood to haul and split
to hold the cold at bay
outside the door
into chimney smoke
and they are beautiful
in death, limbs reaching up
lengths cut clean
with sharp eyes
like people to heaven
begging notice, a chance
for purpose yet
and I am looking,
measuring like a tailor
around burls and forks—
old habits stumbling
with weak knees
in and out of dreams
come wintertime.
Temperatures in the single digits, we left blowing snow outside Tonopah a week ago in Nevada’s Great Basin. Since we have gathered our last bunch of cows and calves to brand this morning to a forecast high of 76°. Here the hillsides are green, spattered with early patches of golden poppies and fiddleneck, as white popcorn flowers begin to creep up the lower slopes. The visual and mental contrasts from Elko to Dry Creek are startling, two different worlds either side of the Great Western Divide within a week’s time.
Posted in Elko, Ranch Journal
Tagged branding, Great Basin, Sierra Nevada, snow, spring, wildflowers, winter
Sunday evening, pickup loads of snow
file down the road to town: snowmen
for Visalia, Exeter, Farmersville front yards
to melt and soak into drought-brown lawns
no one’s mowed in years—a hurried
shortcut from mountains to Valley
upon a crumbling blacktop channel—
water that these oaks and sycamores
see only as lumps of white passing at fifty.
The west and south slopes fill-in
with green, purple patches of frost-bitten
filaree that looked like bare dirt,
softly embrace us now as if we were cattle.
Too wet for work that waits outside,
we slowly release winters of urgency
camped at the door and ease into the
vaguely familiar—reacquaint ourselves
with mud and rain, with one another.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
On the weather map,
a week of storms
four days out
turned down
to a heavy mist
to quell the flames
before the downpour,
wind and rain—
a tame disrobing
before a shower
of leaves that leave
the road between
barbed wire fences
full to the hubcaps
with bedclothes.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged dancing nymphs, fall, sycamores, winter
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