Horse Creek Fire
May 28, 2007
Foreground: Terminus Dam on the Kaweah River, Dry Creek and irriagted pasture
Click here to return to the homepage of Western Folklife Center
Click here to return to the homepage of Western Folklife Center
« April 2007 | Main | June 2007 »
May 28, 2007
Foreground: Terminus Dam on the Kaweah River, Dry Creek and irriagted pasture
Lower Field, Greasy Creek
The braver of two coyote pups living in a culvert on the way back from feeding calves that we're weaning.
____________________________________________________
6/1 Update: It didn’t take mother coyote too long to move her pups, perhaps chastising the pair for letting a human get so close – the scent of my presence all around. My white pickup parked a couple of hundred feet up the road had the pup’s focus while I took pictures, embedded in a rockpile where the grass was laid down with their playing. I waited about thirty minutes for the second pup to come out of the culvert, hoping to catch a wrestling match. I even smoked a cigarette while waiting, leaving tobbacco and ash on a boulder as he lay in the grass about twenty feet away. I’m sure he got an earful from mom!
Weaning Pen
Weaning and feeding 3 corrals of bawling calves into Memorial Day weekend – and judging by the RVs out early on the road yesterday, America’s ready to party despite the price of fuel. We’ll stick close to the canyon and watch for fire and idiots – retreating to our boroughs like ground squirrels.
Up the road tonight for community food and drink, to swap gossip with neighbors and then coast home – a prideful event enhanced as we look down upon all the foreign vehicles on the road like hawks from upslope oaks.
Not surprising that the Natives claim they learned how to live from the wildlife, easy these days to see through wilder eyes. Not special sight perhaps, but a way to sort sense where often there seems none. But the flaw with emulating nature is embedded in human history – and like those who have preceded us, we trust our vision will serve us until we get out of here.
It’s relative, of course, each succeeding generation of land based people believing they are the last bastion to hold such sight stirred with wild tales and heroics, such pleasant myths – but most days better than the alternatives.
Have a pleasant weekend, but steal a moment to remember the Vets.
...New Digs
A stone’s throw from the house, dirt was flying as I changed water this morning.
Far from timid, we’re weighing the pros and cons of a Badger for a neighbor.
…a gusher of poems
that poured out of the house
on Highland Street
and watered the town
-Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel
(“The Gusher, 5-12-89,” A PRINCE ALBERT WIND)
What of science soothes the souls
that haunt the draws and ridges
for a song, for the rhythmic chant
of wind and rain - the storm
that softens their way of going
through time? How they long
to suggest sounds that open clouds
to natural grace, to resonate
with being born once more.
A contrail's white streak east
at dawn dissolves in minutes
over Nevada's great timeless
underwater basin risen
to an endless sea of sage afoot
that can climb into your mind,
read thoughts and forever wait for
passing mortals – sometimes lucky
to hitch a ride on a poem.
Poem notes:
Edit: 5/13 – I’ve tried to smooth it up, eliminate two lazy dependent clauses and the pauses that interrupted the flow I think I want.
Though I don’t know the green-eyed poet whose writing had dried-up for months in Modesto, I love the notion that the poet saw “his stubborn right hand” was the cause and the solution to the drought in 1989, (a year we had to sell a bunch of our brood cows). He then “grabbed his ballpoint/pen and wrote two days/and nights/a gusher of poems” that temporarily saved us all.
No magic that a poet needs to explain, natural grace and poetry are spiritually connected like rain and plenty. With family and friends, her subjects are the spirits of the Dust Bowl Okies with whom we connect, neither perfect nor villains, but human (and perhaps other) souls that have become part of her San Joaquin Valley, a part of any place with history and natural landmarks left where these souls can connect with the poet - and storyteller for that matter. Far-out stuff? Not for a poet; not for a cowboy constantly connecting-up the unexplainable. How nice not to take all the credit for a poem, a vehicle perhaps that works both ways!
5/18 - slight edit towards rhythm and sound
5/26 - forsook the "steep clay way" and acquiesced to the triteness of "going" for a smoother rhythm. Let it sit awhile.
Photo by Densie Withnell
Photo by David Wilke
Dry Creek locals show Cowboy Celtic a lick or two.
How did he do that
even now I see him
lean and graceful
with his Cherokee nose
standing inside a circle of rope
he spun for himself
just for the sheer pleasure
or what was it
my six brothers
gifted in some other ways
could never spin a rope
do a single trick with it
But Gordon Deertrack seventeen
two farms north of us
could spin as well as papa
someday he would be better
and a star at every rodeo
We knew Ardell
had been acting crazy
for weeks
he grew a beard
stalked around
muttering to himself
I gotta go now
to Jackass Hill
To Poker Flat
to Angels Camp
I gotta pan some gold
race me some frogs
kiss me some CanCan girls
I really got to go
He drove away in his Pinto
with the ping
toward the motherlode
on Golden Chain Highway 49
We didn’t hear from him
until his bonanza petered out
he phoned collect
the Pinto gave up in Jamestown
The price of cotton
was high that year
and Papa bought Buster
a rocking horse
and tied it to a tree
on Christmas Eve
Next day
Buster rocked on it
all around the world
to the crib
where the infant lay
And the bells rang out
in every town
Peace on earth
to horse and rider
as they sped past
1994 Christmas Card Greeting
With grins of green, everything
relaxes. Even the brown
patches lounging on the south
slopes privately bathing in a slow
gray rain up and down an empty
canyon road – gentle strum upon
the roof, the soothing hymn.
Proof-enough-of miracles:
grass brought back to life.
Anything in the foothills
has already happened
if you look – if you can hear
the old men’s stories when
you were green, recall
extremes from yesteryear
they thrived on – ground grown
holy with grandfather oaks
a-grin again in the rain.
The opinions expressed in the Western Folklife Center's Deep West online journals are those of the online journal participants and not the Western Folklife Center. The Western Folklife Center does not moderate these journals and as such does not guarantee the veracity, reliability or completeness of any information provided in the journals or in any hyperlink appearing within them.