Click here to return to the homepage of Western Folklife Center
« April 2009 | Main | June 2009 »
We know them by name
or short description – cattle,
horses, dogs and people –
trees, rocks and springs,
peaks, flats and creeks,
and the trails we found
to find them. Natives
notice details, our every
quirk and give us names
as well. An abbreviated
language, spoken mostly
with motion and what’s
on our mind. No one
wants trouble with so
much available outside.
Showy Milkweed (Indian Milkweed, Kotolo Milkweed)
Paregien Ranch
May 30, 2009
Showy Milkweed
Paregien Ranch
May 30, 2009
Showy Milkweed
Paregien Ranch
May 30, 2009
Everybody, at least beetles, bugs, bees and moths, like Milkweed for its source of nectar. Also an important larval food source for Monarch butterflies.
Greasy Creek
June 11, 2009
How many insects can you see? At least eight on this milkweed flowerhead, including a honeybee, bumblebee and a male tarantula hawk. Approximately 2 inches long, the male tarantula hawk feeds off the flowers of milkweeds while the female hunts spiders, including tarantulas. Its sting can be one of the most painful in the insect world. The female lays a single egg in the paralyzed spider where its larva will feed upon the still-living spider, sucking juices and avoiding its vital organs for as long as possible.
Greasy Creek
May 26, 2009
Into our third week of weaning calves, temperatures have been relatively cool with only a couple of days over a hundred degrees. The calves look good, our first bunch averaging 10-20 lbs. heavier than last year. Last night’s thunderstorm should help settle the dust for a few hours this morning as we separate another group from their mothers, cull and de-worm the cows. With a little luck, we ought to begin weaning our last bunch next week.
We know it like a cloak uplifted,
revealing miles of almost anything
alive. Hidden insects feed and breed
on the border for birds and reptiles
ambushing one another to be a meal
for clever mammals – a tapestry
of comings and goings woven
into thickets and openings of wild
oats and fox tail cut by canyons
and creeks, centered in the summer
by waterholes. Here we are insulated
from a crazy world, the reckless
and insane savers of time, collectors
of seconds and minutes to spend
at the end of their strings.
The hills could be an empty-headed blond
or brown – lifeless and slick as ceramic
beneath the blaze that bakes our clay.
Or golden with patches of north-slope oaks
strung like meadows into the long, green
canopy of sycamores down the creek
to the Kaweah below the dam where
cattle find shade with reliable breezes
between grazing the half-light of dusk
and dawn, when each contrast seems
slow to change its expression, unhurried
in the broken light to dress and undress
away from the heat. Wild and domestic
dancing naked, making livings early and late –
depending on your summer nature.
Our friend Jess Cox and his wife stopped by with a bag full of cherries about the time I was digesting the transformation displayed online of the Battle Mountain Ranch (see May 19th entry). In recent years we have exchanged vegetables, fruit, jam and olives in season and Jess knows that I enjoy his practical perspective as well as the fresh produce. But when I blurted-out disconnected phrases about the things that disturbed me so about the New Battle Mountain, he just grinned and offered, “Don’t go back!”
What I heard unsaid was “don’t subject yourself to the turmoil, it’ll just make you miserable.” He was right, there was no changing the chateau-like landscaping in the middle of the Tule River’s scrub brush, the Zen temple, the impractical south-facing deck where an egg would fry in the summer, the disrespect for Native culture, etc., etc. It was more than just offensive to me.
Not unlike the sycamores on Dry Creek that were clear-cut for a rock and gravel operation in 1991, I was sick to my stomach. In both instances major changes were made by the owners of the property – and as a staunch advocate for private property rights, I shouldn’t have felt sickened.
Beyond politics, one disrespects a place out of ignorance or arrogance, and either way it seems that the lack of understanding about a place, how it works within a watershed and the larger surroundings, as well as its history, are at the root of my stomach problems. Recent clearing of heritage Valley Oaks in Three Rivers without a permit or consultation with the County, and even the orderly plans for an upscale town in the Yokohl Valley, fall into the same gut-wrenching category for me. Not looking for new crusades against growth and progress, I realize that my age is showing.
Whether documenting or writing, give the place you live a voice before it changes.
Since money’s been made
the crucible, the crucifix –
it’s been a hard row to hoe,
but my beloved Battle Mountain,
so disturbing, hawked
as an online slideshow.
Remember the flasks
on the shady back-deck
of Woodbridge Chardonnay
we consumed trying to
flabbergast her, before
dinner, before the Cabernet
and the slab of meat that
leaked on the fire, we
couldn’t out-crass her
style. But I don’t see it –
the deck, table and
barbeque in the pictures.
One wonders about people
with money: why and how
they let it pour
into watery concrete
around gossip rocks
in a metal shop floor.
I wonder at epiphanies
so removed from place,
the spirituality necessary
to build and sell
a sanctuary to their love
at their temporary
home. So many doors
encased in stone, so
small a space to house
an altar. The only thing
left unchanged is how
you delivered water.
- for h2ojohn
Credit: Internet listing by RExInet, RExBuy, RExChange and RExSold
Agents and Brokers - real estate and ranches for sale in the Sierras.
for more views see the link below:
http://www.rexinet.com/7052.html
Credit: Internet listing by RExInet, RExBuy, RExChange and RExSold
Agents and Brokers - real estate and ranches for sale in the Sierras.
for more views see the link below:
http://www.rexinet.com/7052.html
Between Moses and Mt. Dennison,
the floods run around a steep island thrust
into a channel of cobbles
where granite sand meets native clay -
a squaw dust loam
between granite slabs of gossip rocks below.
New holes now drilled
are filled with red wine rootstock,
hairy-bottomed canewood added to water,
then padded and smoothed
into a muddy midden
worn like gloves to the wrists
on soft white hands of friends -
a festive planting party
hearts from all over bent
genuflecting in the dirt.
With my own glass, I am drunk with it.
My first vision is a movie flawed
by vines burning alive
yet I can feel its gossamer walk in clouds
work here
in tomorrow’s gnarled vine rows cloaked
in this gray overcast
I skip and dance nearly naked
with full breasts,
nipples tight against the night
downcanyon draft
that lifts and exposes my long legs
and a moonlit patch
of a woman in me.
In this soil, another uprising
peppered with dried native blood -
the last battle pitched
for a pocket of renegades.
I see lines of blue coats from Ft. Tejon
horse drawn caissons
their cannons blasting holes
that mythologize this mountain.
I sip and spill wine on this same ground
you plant - overhear you say,
“This is the holiest of days.”
- for Dagny Grant
First published in the sparsely circulated chapbook With What Is (1997), and also included in Poems From Dry Creek (2008).
Dawn: Spider Ranch
Arpil 22, 2009
Out the door early this morning to feed a pen of calves that we started weaning Friday. For the past few years, we’ve employed ‘fenceline weaning’, keeping the mothers close to reduce the stress of the process. With water at each corral, we can also keep the dust controlled and hold pinkeye and respiratory problems to a minimum. It all helps, especially when it gets to be over 100 degrees. After a week in the pen, the cows will forget the company of their calves, and by the third day, the calves are already bawling at the truck for breakfast.
We haven’t weighed any calves yet, but it looks like we’ve had a fairly decent feed year judging by how the bunches we’ve gathered look. We’ve plenty of old feed left, having reduced our stocking capacity in every pasture because of the high price of last year’s alfalfa. Now, of course, our concern is fire, especially around Lake Kaweah where the snowmelt is rising faster than the irrigation release, now pretty close to the dry feed as we head into Memorial Day weekend and a lake full of recreators.
Somehow, Robbin has managed to get the garden in shape, having done some planting before we left for Oklahoma, and just now finishing-up with Armenian cucumbers, potatoes and beans. But the weeds in the orchard and yard have had a second germination with our late rains, growing well while we were gone.
With two bunches to wean tomorrow, it’s the time year when you better get out early, as now the cattle are headed to shade by 7:30. As my good friend Joe Bruce remarked last summer, “an hour early in the morning is worth four in the afternoon.” We’ll wait for his Latin translation.
Harvest Brodiaea
Greasy Creek
May 11, 2009
Foothill Penstemon (Foothill Beardtongue)
Greasy Creek
May 11, 2009
Italian Thistle
Greasy Creek
May 11,2009
Farewell to Spring (Winecup, Evening Primrose)
Greasy Creek
May 11, 2009
Twining Brodiaea
Greasy Creek
May 11, 2009
Purple Milkweed
Greasy Creek
May 11, 2009
Sweet Alyssum
Greasy Creek
May 11, 2009
Clay Mariposa Lily, Mariposa Lily)
Greasy Creek
May 11, 2009
Common Yarrow (Milfoil)
Greasy Creek
May 11, 2009
Common Peppergrass
Dry Creek
April 10, 2009
California Yerba Santa (Mountain Balm)
Dry Creek
April 5, 2009
Thanks again to Krys Munzing for identifying this one. Just now catching-up with old business.
California Buckeye
Greasy Creek
August 30, 2009
Milk Thistle (Blessed Milk Thistle, Russian Thistle, Musk Thistle, Nodding Thistle, Bristle Thistle) only thistle with milky juice.
Dry Creek
May 6, 2009
Coyote Thistle
Dry Creek
May 6, 2009
Some days turn tenuous and futile,
backslide with the weather. Weeds grow,
springs dry, some cattle get away –
but rising early to write cultivates
a certain vanity. You could set
your watch by my father irrigating
eighty acres at seventy – like an ant
knowing minor accomplishment and
all the anthills of this planet, grains
of sand stacked like Egypt’s pyramids,
caravans packing seed for the whole.
How easy to forget that we are small
and overlooked, and why I wish
for you to keep a journal of words,
hear them resonate with your dreams –
each thread of rich detail woven
with the mundane and misunderstood,
the grizzly and the fuzzy truth
that embraces us with no guarantees.
Here the Muses of Hesiod reside –
simple shepherd, simple life.
It was Johnny-this and Johnny-that
when I was in the field with men
with whiskers – blue bibs with brass buttons
– good lace-up boots to walk the furrows
behind them swamping fruit, the smells
of sweat and purple berries crushed
between the boxes stacked on the wagon,
or rinds of oranges bruised from sack to lug
the Okies picked when I was a boy.
East against an incessant crosswind, huge
flat hand that swept them off to California,
I aim towards the source of sound on my tongue,
its nasal resonance I smear on the page, drawn
to the Sirens’ lilt unraveled in ribbons – leafless
trees bent along the Interstate as if in welcome.
Already, I have succumbed to the temptation
of looking back, of retreating and rewriting
events only time has allowed me to see –
and only at this distance can the players shift
among themselves upon a fuzzy stage
to reappear in foggy memory, to come alive
and walk among us. I am missing parts
of your face, even of your smile, but not
the eyes that held me captive for decades
begun with my connecting high sierra stars
between us, proclaiming things – perhaps even
praying, back flat to shallow granite ground,
silhouettes of horses grazing, bell mare
shedding flies, other side of a lake.
My direct line and short-cut connection
across dark crystalline space. Ah…
the depth of forever, then and there, was
a very long time. On the uncomplicated
edge of innocence, it came early – a clear
view with magic possibilities – now sweet
the perspective and the luxury of age.
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.