Category: Personal

Exploring the End of North Fork Drive

Trail Guy, The Farmer, Hiking Buddy and I went on a bit of an adventure. We had all been here are various times in our lives, but never after a fire. The upper end of North Fork Drive had borate (pink fire retardant) sprayed on both sides of the road, the views were much wider than before with so much brush burned out, and it was much more apparent than before how very steep the drop-off is to the river.

After a tail-gate lunch, we headed across the creek and up a dirt road to see how things looked.

This road was widened by bulldozers to create a firebreak. The area definitely burned, but the October rains and the north-facing slopes together have allowed green to begin emerging.

Hey -what is that?

Just a couple of little underground rooms, one with a solid concrete door.

Look – we crossed a bridge to peek into the little rooms – I didn’t notice at the time.

This road is just going up and up and up and up. . . nothing looks different. Let’s go back and take the fork to the right. But what is this white stuff? Ash. A tree on the ground burned and we are looking at the branching pattern left behind.

This was probably covered in a variety of shrubs. I am loving the green here. We headed over to a big flat area, known as Grunigen’s Flat, a former homestead or cattle ranch or commune or something.

Because it all burned, this impressive rock wall shows up.

We followed the wall, which followed the creek. All this chiseled quarried stone, laid without mortar, for what end?

Ugh. Fire. I kept expecting to come to a granite slab with Indian grind-holes. Sure enough, we did, but I didn’t photograph it. I was too absorbed in the sycamores, stone wall, and the green.

The ground was weird like this all over – is this some sort of fire-heave effect?? I don’t think it was a gopher evacuation camp.

The Farmer did a bit of searching and learned that the wall was built in the ’30s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, specifically the Yucca CCC Camp. Not sure what purpose it served other than providing work. If I didn’t have other things going on, I might look it up. But sometimes, a wall is just a wall, and a stone wall this aesthetically pleasing is good enough for this Central California artist for now.

Thankful

Thank You

9 Things I Learned in September

Crocs: Classic All Terrain Clog or Offroad Sport Clog? I found Offroad on Amazon (not referring to the fake ones I bought in the previous month) and then found All Terrain on the Crocs site. All Terrain (2nd photo) have a better tread, but I haven’t had a chance to try them on a trail yet.(Come on, you stupid fires, and I am taking both pairs if we have to evacuate).
Akimbo means standing with a hand on your hip and your elbow pointed outward. I didn’t know this. (Well, duh, that’s why it is in a Things I Learned Post)
If you are vacuuming your bathroom and start waving the wand around (chasing spiderwebs or something equally adventurous), watch out for the loose end of the toilet paper. Of course, it is good for a laugh…
August has been my least favorite month for most of my adult life; September is threatening to replace it.
September brought a very hands-on lesson about the difference between opinions and facts. During these fires, people express their opinions such as “It isn’t looking good for Mineral King” or “So-and-So Who Supposedly Has An Inside Track said mandatory evacuation is coming soon!” These opinions affected me at first; I should have blown them off as FakeBook noise (even though many were spoken in person). Now I can recognize an opinion and wait for the real information.
The Human Calculator is a guy named Scott Flansburg. Fascinating! I heard him on Mike Rowe’s podcast and learned that all calculations lead back to 9. Maybe not all. . . but get this: pick any 2 numbers, add them up. Add up the digits within the answer, subtract them from the answer, and if the new answer is right, it will be divisible by 9. For example, 44 + 23 (just random numbers)=67. 6+7=13. 67-13=54, which is divisible by 9.
Fire containment is based on the percentage of the perimeter of the fire. I wish I didn’t need to know this.
Did you know that a dial tone on the telephone is F#? You can use it to tune a guitar in an emergency! (Just what constitutes a musical emergency?; yes, guitar strings begin with E, but if you find F#, you can get to E, and finally, no, I don’t play guitar).
This Evergreen Home is a new-to-me blog about simple living. The page called 101 Simple Living Tips is especially good, and has links in it to other sites full of good tips.

An Extraordinarily Good Day

An interviewer once asked me, “What does a good day look like in your life as an artist?”

(This post is just a bit of reminiscing about life before the fire took over our lives and thoughts.)

Rachelle brought her new lungs and her husband to see us, first time in person since the end of April. I fed them cookies. (They love my cookies so much that I spent $10 mailing some to them in LA. Yes, me, Frugal Queen of the San Joaquin!) Rachelle and I were so happy to see each other that our eyes may have leaked a little bit. Our hubbies were pretty happy to see one another too.

Then, I finished this painting. (You have seen it on the blog by now).

I was on a roll so I pulled out this canvas.

I thought it was finished, and then I remembered that it needs a wind machine. You have also seen this one after it got scanned.

But wait! There’s more! A former drawing student (from 20+ years ago) emailed with the usual “You probably don’t remember me but. . .” My response was something like, “OF COURSE I DO!!” She came to my studio with her parents, husband, and baby who is too cute for words (yes, this from me, All Babies Look Alike). Out of respect for their privacy, I will just show you this one photo of me with L at my studio. We were both beside ourselves with delight.

To top it off, I sent invoices to 2 customers for recently completed commissions. Sometimes it feels as if I work for fun or for free, then a customer will remind me to send a bill.

That was an extraordinarily good day.

P.S. I started designing a calendar for 2022, appropriately titled “Places and Things We Love” because. . .

Using pencil, oil paints and murals, I make art you can understand, of PLACES AND THINGS WE LOVE (for prices that won’t scare you).

Sorry Thoughts in a Smoky World

All this time hunkering down inside out of the smoke (while the library is closed) is giving me extra time to think. Mostly I have come up with sorry thoughts. I will see if I can think of something positive to include.

There is a garbage mama bear with 2 cubs living behind Village Market in Three Rivers. It was too dark in the shade of the Valley Oak tree to take any photos of the sorry creatures.
We moved the watering bowl for deer away from the front porch in hopes of retraining them to ignore the planting bed there. Maybe it will be less sorry with less traffic.
I vacuumed my studio against all common sense. With ash everywhere, you may be wondering, “Why bother?” Here is why I bothered: I dropped a box of pencils on the floor under my drawing table and when I emerged from gathering them, I was covered in dust, ash and spiderwebs. “Covered” may be a slight exaggeration, but ick, it was a sorry mess down there.
My sorry pomegranate tree has never produced anything of substance, unless you count the flowers. I used to surround it with fencing and give it regular water; last year the fencing was needed to protect the herb garden, so I told the tree to either live or die, its choice. This year, it has produced about 5 tiny pomegranates. It looks normal but it is really small.
Rather than go to the community meetings about fire (because I despise wearing a face diaper), I have been trying to watch them online. “Trying”, because a sorry speaker on my laptop is blown, the sound system at the Memorial Building is rumbly and mumbly (cannot hear any of the people asking questions), and sometimes the organizers just cannot get the camera or the sound to work. Technology will save us all, eh?
These meetings are on Fakebook, which allows non-members like me to watch only during the meetings. With all the tech troubles, it popped to a screen showing people’s comments on the side. Ugh. People were abrupt, rude, and impulsively spouted their opinions without any thought as to whether or not it was helpful. Our county supervisor made an urgent request at a recent meeting to everyone to STOP believing what you read on social media and just go to the official places for fire information. Amen!
A very long time ago, we were invited to a friend’s wedding up at the heliport at Ash Mountain. The groom asked me to bring my camera for some candid shots, and when I arrived, he told me that the scheduled photographer wasn’t coming so I was IT. What??? I did my best, and have to say that the photos looked good because there was a fire. Why? I don’t know why there was a fire. Oh, why did the smoke make the photos look good? Because the foggy gray background showed off the colors and the people. (They aren’t married any more, but that has nothing to do with my photography, I promise.) This makes me wonder why I haven’t been looking for things to photograph around my yard. Easy answer: nothing is in bloom at this sorry time of year after a sorry summer. Oh wait, I did find this one.
Does anyone else out there have a tab on their Favorites bar on their computer labeled “Disasters”? That is a sorry sort of label, although it is accurate. (Fires, the plague, local arrests, etc.)
The spokesman for the fire information is from south Georgia. Whenever he mentions the continued survival of the General Sherman tree, I wonder if he is sorry; after all, General Sherman marched into Atlanta and burned the place. He always grins when he says the General is still standing.
Wuksatchi Lodge will never be called that again by several of us who are enjoying Mr. Georgia’s presentations. His earlier pronunciation was “Wuh-kooshi”, but now he is calling it “Wuh-kah-shee”. (Gotta find our fun where we can!) His pronunciations brought much appreciated laughter to the meeting.
After letting our one remaining tiny lawn go wild all summer in hopes that it would thicken up, either by roots or by seeds, I finally consented to Trail Guy’s request to mow. It is definitely thicker after 2 summers of experimenting with my own peculiar theories of lawn growth. (Tucker likes the grass long.)

That was a positive thought. Okay, stick a fork in me – I’m done.

Working Anyway (Cough cough)

If you think your cabin and cabin community might burn up along with your home and your town, you can spin in circles, nervously jabber on the phone, send endless emails and texts, putter, make a dog’s breakfast of your knitting, compulsively refresh websites with fire maps, randomly go through cupboards, seek oral gratification, pace, try to take deep breaths and then experiment with your new wheezy smoker’s cough.

You can also put on your big girl pants and do some work.

Montana Cabin, commissioned pencil drawing, 9×12″

The Orchard, original oil painting, 12×12″, $250 (plus tax, but you know that)

New drawing lesson with C via email – a demonstration on how to draw a dog eye from a fuzzy photograph of a now deceased black dog, the most difficult of all possible drawing situations.

Cough cough, hack, wheeze.

It was actually sort of not too smoky yesterday so we took a walk.

See what I mean about helicopters and the little marbles they carry?

Looking downstream – not too bad.

Looking upstream – yeppers, big wildfire, but smoke not as bad as it has been.

At one time, it looked this way. It could again. We could get rain. There is no reason to think that winter will never happen again. The peaks upstream don’t show in this drawing because it was winter and they were hidden by clouds, not smoke. Remember those days?

Oops. See what I mean about nervously jabbering?

Random Collection of Unrelated Thoughts in a Saturday Bonus Post

One week ago we climbed on the hill behind our house and saw this above our roof.

The smoke from fires makes it look like a foggy day. The differences are an orange tint, warm temperatures, and falling giant dandruff instead of a gray tint, cold temperatures and falling water.

This week Tucker and I had a little fun in the grass. He likes to stay just outside of arm’s reach, and jumps ahead whenever I crawl toward him. This is the second year of no mowing in hopes that the lawn would thicken up either by roots or by seeds. The cats love it long, and it seems thicker. Of course, transplanting chunks from another area may have contributed.

I just checked this book out from the library (Woodlake, because Three Rivers is closed due to the fires). It is fluffy, and fluffy is most welcome right now. The weird orangish tint is because of the fire.

This week I learned that the company who printed my coloring books has not saved the files. This means that reprinting any of the coloring books will involve a massive amount of computer work, again. The fad has passed along with demand, so I am unsure about proceeding. I am considering compiling a new one, combining pictures from the previous five. The Heart of Rural Tulare County is a long title, but it describes it well. This is an old post about designing #5. All the coloring books are sold out, but perhaps one of my retail outlets still has a copy or two. Here is the cover of the second one:

This week several places asked about reordering notecards. The prices have gone up considerably, and I am in sticker shock. When I started making notecard sets in 1987, they sold in stores for $5 for 10 cards. (You can read about that here, here, here, and here; there may be more old posts about them, but I am tired of looking for them and you are probably tired of reading all those links). Now they will have to sell at $10 for 4 cards. I made a new design, and will restock only a few of the most popular cards. People just don’t write that much any more to justify my keeping a large inventory. This is the upcoming Thank You card (no, it won’t say “Note Cards – 5.5″ x 4″ Folded – Premium matt: Front Side)

Because of the fires, drawing lessons did not restart the day after Labor Day. I have postponed them until the first week of October. I miss my students (a dear one died yesterday morning – if you are in drawing lessons and want to know more, email me). But, with the fire restriction of voluntary evacuation, I am reluctant to leave home; if it suddenly became mandatory to evacuate, then I wouldn’t be able to return home and get all my ~~sweaters~~ stuff.

17 Wildfire Thoughts (Mostly Questions)

I don’t expect anyone to read all this. It is just my peculiar way of thinking.

If Voluntary Evacuation suddenly turns to Mandatory Evacuation, does this mean fire danger is imminent? I think it means that the officials want the roads clear of traffic and no people to worry about.
If evacuation is mandatory, people are allowed to stay, but they are not allowed to return if they leave. I wonder if there are exceptions, such as getting groceries, going to the dentist, checking on elderly parents, going to work… I’m thankful I get to work from home.
Why do the officials deem it necessary to bring in more crews when the terrain is too rugged for boots on the ground? Oh, it is to protect the town and the cabins on the Mineral King Road.
If they are unable to contain a fire when it is only an acre or two, why do they believe they can contain it when it is hundreds of acres? Wouldn’t it be better to flood it with that pink stuff when it is small?
I am sure that the people in charge know what they are doing. (Pippin knows what he is doing; isn’t it interesting how well he blends in with the weird light and dry grasses?)
How can anyone know what he is doing when fires do what fires do, which is be unpredictable, go crazy and ruin stuff?
But the people in charge know a lot about fire behaviors, patterns, how weather and terrain affects it, don’t they? (Did Pippin know what he was doing back when this photo was taken?)
The people in charge are trained to talk in code to keep people from getting alarmed. (My dentist does the same thing – I got him to admit this to me when I called him on it.)
Lower temperatures with increased humidity slows down fires. It also means a greater risk that pipes will freeze and burst in our cabins because Mineral King was closed before we had a chance to take care of some basics.
Why doesn’t California do more active forest management? Think of the wasted potential lumber while we import overpriced lumber from distant locations! If logging, logging roads, and grazing were allowed (I don’t mean in the Parks, but in the Forests), there would be less fuels and there would be firebreaks. If mechanical thinning was done around settlements, they would have a greater chance of surviving. (Why aren’t they asking me how to run their business? And why has the term “forest management” become political? Good grief Charlie Brown)
Why do we believe that Three Rivers won’t burn? The towns of Paradise and Greenville probably thought the same thing, and look how that turned out.
In response to the previous question, Three Rivers doesn’t have those conifer trees, particularly standing dead ones, full of ptich, waiting to explode. Instead, we have buckeye trees, which don’t burn very well.
The Park Superintendent said the #1 priority is people’s homes (maybe he said “the community”). Within the Park, the big trees are more important than the Park’s structures because the trees are several thousand years old while the Park structures will probably collapse in 30 years.
Helicopters carry a water container beneath that looks about the size of a marble in comparison to the size of the fire. Is this truly effective or is it the equivalent of a mouse with a squirt gun? (Just learned that there is some sort of fire retardant added to the water).
Maybe it is a good thing that a great number of houses in Three Rivers are vacation rentals; that means less people to evacuate. (Would you believe that Moro Rock and Alta Peak are usually visible from this location? No reason for anyone to visit Three Rivers right now.)
When thinking about evacuating, there are 2 parts to consider: A. What do I need for a week or two? and B. What can I not stand to lose?
So many people have offered to help with trucks, trailers, places to store things, and places to stay. We don’t plan on leaving but have made piles of things in case it all goes nutso.
The same view in better times.

Painting in a Makeshift Studio in Mineral King

These photos are from Three Rivers yesterday morning around 9:30 a.m. We are under mandatory evacuation from Mineral King and cannot go there. Evacuation is voluntary for our section of Three Rivers.

This post is about time spent in Mineral King approximately 2-3 weeks ago.

I guess that any place an artist decides to paint can be called a studio. I painted on the back porch of the cabin. (I hope I get to do that again next year.)

First, I started three of the paintings at home.

These three along with 3 blank canvases went to Mineral King. Because paintings have been selling well at Kaweah Arts , I wanted to keep my inventory up for them.

It wasn’t an ideal situation for painting, but I made decent progress over the course of several sessions (while avoiding red fir cones that the chickarees were dropping out of trees in the backyard).