SILENCE

Sometimes silence can be my best friend.   One of the first things I do in the morning is turn the radio on to get the latest news and weather report.   After about an hour of hearing all the negative things humanity is inflicting upon it's self it's time to turn it off.    Just the sound of the wind, rain, birds and the frogs at night can be enough for me.   A trip to the city with all the traffic, construction, and other noises makes me just want to get back home ASAP.   

I will never forget when Celia and I were in Costco years ago when she was getting a hearing test when an older man left his hearing aids off to have them cleaned.   As he walked off to do some shopping he said out loud--SILENCE AT LAST!

GARDENING 2024

With the recent warm weather and a break from all the rain the urge to dig in the dirt and plant a few seeds takes a hold of me.   Something in my DNA I guess that always kicks in this time of year.   In my younger years I always planned to have the perfect garden or at least better than what I had the year before--weed free, perfect rows and a bumper crop of veggies, which was usually zucchinis.    Not anymore as perfect is no longer in my vocabulary, now I just take a shovel, turn over the muddy ground, weeds and all, put seeds in the ground hoping for the best.   Peas are the first seeds I stick in the ground as the Stellar Jays sit in the nearby tree looking down on me.  I know what they saying to each other, "hay, look at the human down there sticking those seeds in the ground for us to go dig up for our dinner later when he is gone."    Even putting chicken wire over the newly planted seeds for protection is no deterrent as the next day I see it has been removed.    Maybe they get together with their rat friends during the night to help remove the wire and share in the bounty.   One year I noticed something was eating my climbing string beans.  I placed a motion camera out one night to see what varmint was guilty.   The next day it showed a mouse up the bean stock chewing on a green bean.   At the end of the day my back hurts, my hands are dirty, my boots muddy and best of all, I will have the opportunity to do it all again tomorrow if the weather permits.   

RAINFALL DATA FOR CURRENT WATER YEAR

 At my CoCoRaHS station (OR-DG-22) I have received 22.76 inches of rain from the start of this water year on 10/1/2022 to 2/28/2023.     The average for this time period is 28.57 inches giving me a deficit of 5.81 inches.   

CELIA AT THE CABIN

 This picture was taken on 2/5/2011 at the cabin where Celia did many of her paintings.   She was taking a break and enjoying her favorite can of beans.  My kind of woman!

THE LOSS OF AN OLD FRIEND

I received an email from Judy Barceloux, the wife of my old friend Alan Barceloux, informing me he passed away August 12th. Alan had been fighting stage 4 lung cancer for the last five or six months. Alan and I had known each other going back to our days as Boy Scouts in Willows, California in the late 1950's. We had many adventures together exploring the Mendocino National Forest during the summers in our high school years, including backpacking through the Middle Eel Yolla Bolly Wilderness Area. We spent some early mornings hunting ducks and geese in the rice fields south of town during the winter months. In 1966 Alan enlisted in the Air Force for three years during the Vietnam war at the same time I was drafted into the Army for two years. In the Fall of 1969 Alan and I shared an apartment together while we both attended Lassen College in Susanville, California under the GI Bill. Later he attended Chico State University then took over the family auto parts business of Baceloux Brothers Auto Supply in Willows and worked at the NAPA Auto parts store in Orland until he retired. No doubt we drank our fair share of beer together over the years. We kept in touch by email and in many ways Alan was like a brother to me. Whenever Celia and I were visiting family in Chico we would enjoy a meal and have a few beers with Alan and his wife Judy. RIP old friend!

8/16/2022

FLOATING THE ROGUE RIVER

Allen Wilson was a neighbor and friend when we lived on Hunter Creek outside of Gold Beach in the 1980's.   He had been a river guide on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and few other rivers, including the Rogue River.   To float the Wild and Scenic section of the Rogue River requires a permit between May and October, and sometimes you need to apply a year in advance for the time period you want.   The permit covers a certain number of people in the group and I don't remember the limit.    Allen had a permit for a summer float trip and asked me if I would be interested in going since he had a vacancy in their permit.   The reason for the permit was to insure each party of a place to camp, since there is only so many sand bars available in the wild and scenic portion to spend the night, plus try to make it a wilderness experience without bumper to bumper traffic going down the river.   The permit required all trash and human waste to be removed.  Allen had a bucket that we used to deposit our daily waste into after placing it in plastic bags.   To go up behind a rock to do our business we could see toilet paper and more behind every big rock.   During the high water in the winter all this got flushed down river.  No wonder it was common to get giardia from the Gold Beach water source.   

To start the trip we had to drive over Bear Camp Road toward Grants Pass and check in at the BLM Visitor Center at Rand to be issued a permit to be displayed on the raft.   It was a 3 or 4 day trip down to Foster Bar where we ended our trip.   Allen knew the rough rapids and where we had to pull the raft from the river and portage around, such as Black Bar falls.   On our second or third day we reached the Rogue River Ranch, a national historic site at Marial administered by BLM.   We spent a few hours looking at the ranch and the old house, used as a museum as  I recall.   There is a BLM road coming into the ranch from the north.  Beyond Marial we entered the Siskiyou National Forest where the old Mule Creek Guard Station was utilized by the trail crew that maintained the Rogue River trail.  The last dangerous rapid is at Blossom Bar.   Allen was experienced at getting a raft over this rapid, but many others have tried this, some have failed and some drowned.   This is the upper limit where jet boats coming up river from Gold Beach can go.   Many of these jet boats bring people up to the lodge at Paradise Bar, just below Blossom Bar.   In many ways this is where the wilderness experience ends.  

   

MY MUSICAL BACKGROUND

 As a young child, I don't remember much music is the home. With 6 children my mother didn't have the time to, and maybe not the interest to promote music appreciation with us.   I don't even remember a radio being turned on

In grade school, it wasn't until the 5th or 6th grade when some students had to buy these red flute instruments, called tonettes, and learn how to play them.  Our class was not included as we were considered slow learners.   On rainy days when we could not have P.E. classes outside, we had to go to the basement and dance to the songs of Pat Boone.   It was horrifying having to ask a girl to dance and then proceed to step on her feet a few times while trying to dance.  

 In my junior year of high school, there was a choral class first thing in the morning in the gymnasium.  Not sure how I ended up in the class.  The first day each student had to hum to a note the teacher played on the piano.    When it was over six of us boys were told to sit up in the bleachers, do our homework, don't cause a disturbance and you will get a C grade in the class.  We were considered tone-deaf. 

As the years went by most music I listen to was country-western or folk on the radio of whatever vehicle I was driving while doing farm work.  Most of the country-western music was about how some woman left her man and his tears were flowing in his beer, not the most upbeat.    During my two years in the Army most music was at the beer garden or EM (enlisted man's) club where they were playing songs dealing with the Vietnam war while we could not consume the beer fast enough.   

When Celia and I were living in Cottage Grove we got involved with a group of people in Eugene, many retired teachers, some musicians that needed people to form a band to play at retirement homes.  They were willing to teach us less fortunate people with no musical talents.    They even provided instruments and taught us how to read music.   Celia picked the flute and I the saxophone.    We did not become masters at it, but it filled in for what we missed out on in those early years.    

Looking Back for Tomorrow

 Except for an occasional visit with neighbors or a trip to the store, this computer has become our primary connection to the outside world where we can share our thoughts and experiences.   Attached is a short essay we can all relate to and ponder.

Map collecting has been a hobby of mine ever since my school days.   Remember those state maps you could get at the gas station back in the 1950’s and 60’s for free?   I still have some, plus maps from National Geographic, National Forests, Parks and my share of atlases.    Now we have Google Maps and Google Earth to find all those places we want to explore.    With no place to go these days I  can travel back in time by sitting and looking at the computer screen in search of  where we traveled, backpacked and worked over the years.    Some of those places are hard to find, especially the many forest roads I have traveled and trails I have hiked.   Some of those roads are no longer maintained, the clear cut units we used as landmarks are now second growth forests, some are over 40 years old and many places, including wildness areas, have been burned.   The natural topography is still there, the streams, the ridges and the mountain peaks, but not the way we remember them due to fires that have altered the landscape.   

In midst of a world-wide pandemic, a changing climate, political chaos and an unknown economic future we don’t know what is down the road of life.    There are no maps charting the future course.   History can be our greatest teacher as we look back in time and learn from our mistakes.    Humanity has survived two world wars, the Spanish flu of 1918-19 and the Great Depression of the last century.    The great question is did humanity make the right choices after all those events?  Were they good only in the short-term and harmful in the long-term?  

Hopefully we all survive this crisis and become more understanding of each other, our environment, and develop an economy that is more sustainable for future generations.    The natural world is constantly changing and we better adjust no matter how much we think we can change Mother Nature.    We have tried for generations with little success, causing more harm than good.  Who knows what the future has in store for mankind?   One thing for sure, I don’t think we will see those free maps at the gas station ever again.