The world is on fire... or at least California is.

This freaky sunset brought to you by the Butte Fire (taken last Friday)

This was my drive into Sonora, Calif., last Thursday afternoon...

 The Butte Fire started the previous afternoon, about 43 miles from Sonora,

and since spread quickly and moved a lot closer.

Drive to Sonora Friday afternoon... a wee bit smokier.

Note how dark it is, at 5:30 p.m. Spooky stuff.

I've never been anywhere with such thick smoke.

Tiny bits of white ash fell like a very light snow. Odd.

I have relatives who've been evacuated from their home for days, now,

due to this fire. Happily the fire missed their house,

now they're waiting for the power to come back on,

so they can move back (no power=no water if you're on a well).

Last Sunday afternoon DH and I tore ourselves away from scanning fire info

(re: the Butte Fire, the Valley Fire, and the Rough fire)

and head to the golf course.

DH golfs, I bird/peruse nature.

Acorn woodpeckers living up to their name.

"This one goes here..."

I love how this branch is so densely drilled

that in parts it's see-through. 

I love the white eyeliner on this California ground squirrel (Spermophilus beecheyi).

Cutie. 

Non-native mullein affected by fasciation

(note normal mullein bloom on lower left).

I love fasciation and the super interesting shapes it brings about.

Another herbivore (desert cottontail, Sylvilagus audubonii), diggin' the golf course habitat.

Their habit of freezing when startled is great for photography. =)

Canada geese, another herbivore species that favors this place.

Considering I didn't have the auto-focus telephoto lens,

I'm very happy with how sharp this shot is. Luck!

So, with a couple soothing, non-fire-focused hours under our belt,

we see this...

Oh, dear. Another fire?!?

It was the Sundance Fire, near Oakhurst.

Happily, we also saw this large air tanker a little while later,

 and the smoke cleared pretty soon thereafter.

Phew!

And last night it actually rained a little bit (minor miracle),

which is very exciting.

I hope it helps quiet some of these fires.

It's also about 20 degrees cooler than it was last week.

Also good.

Anyhow, I don't have a profound way to end this post.

It's been very sobering seeing what's been happening

in Middletown (via the Valley Fire) and elsewhere.

If there's a vote re: whether or not summer should end now & fall should start?

I'd vote YES, please.

Let's do that.

Stay cool, everyone.

xoxoxobb

Is it me, or should this be a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle?!?

Geese (presumably snow & Ross's) at Merced NWR, January 2014.

Someone enduring a long winter might appreciate this advanced puzzle challenge.

Or not. =)

xobb

John Muir's spring in the California's Great Valley

  
Perhaps, with John Muir's birthday just this week, I'll post some of what he wrote of his walk across the San Joaquin valley in spring (from Chapter 16 of The Mountains of California, The Bee-Pastures).

"The Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March, April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step. Mints, gilias, nemophilas, castilleias, and innumerable compositæ were so crowded together that, had ninety-nine per cent. of them been taken away, the plain would still have seemed to any but Californians extravagantly flowery. The radiant, honey-ful corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another, glowed in the living light like a sunset sky--one sheet of purple and gold, with the bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it from the north, the San Joaquin from the south, and their many tributaries sweeping in at right angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into sections fringed with trees.

 

"...When I first saw this central garden, the most extensive and regular of all the bee-pastures of the State, it seemed all one sheet of plant gold, hazy and vanishing in the distance, distinct as a new map along the foot-hills at my feet.

"Descending the eastern slopes of the Coast Range through beds of gilias and lupines, and around many a breezy hillock and bush-crowned headland, I at length waded out into the midst of it. All the ground was covered, not with grass and green leaves, but with radiant corollas, about ankle-deep next the foot-hills, knee-deep or more five or six miles out. Here were bahia, madia, madaria, burrielia, chrysopsis, corethrogyne, grindelia, etc., growing in close social congregations of various shades of yellow, blending finely with the purples of clarkia, orthocarpus, and œnothera, whose delicate petals were drinking the vital sunbeams without giving back any sparkling glow.

"Because so long a period of extreme drought succeeds the rainy season, most of the vegetation is composed of annuals, which spring up simultaneously, and bloom together at about the same height above the ground, the general surface being but slightly ruffled by the taller phacelias, pentstemons, and groups of Salvia carduacea , the king of the mints.

"Sauntering in any direction, hundreds of these happy sun-plants brushed against my feet at every step, and closed over them as if I were wading in liquid gold. The air was sweet with fragrance, the larks sang their blessed songs, rising on the wing as I advanced, then sinking out of sight in the polleny sod, while myriads of wild bees stirred the lower air with their monotonous hum--monotonous, yet forever fresh and sweet as every-day sunshine. Hares and spermophiles showed themselves in considerable numbers in shallow places, and small bands of antelopes were almost constantly in sight, gazing curiously from some slight elevation, and then bounding swiftly away with unrivaled grace of motion. Yet I could discover no crushed flowers to mark their track, nor, indeed, any destructive action of any wild foot or tooth whatever. "


And possibly my favorite image,


"The great yellow days circled by uncounted, while I drifted toward the north, observing the countless forms of life thronging about me, lying down almost anywhere on the approach of night. And what glorious botanical beds I had! Often-times on awaking I would find several new species leaning over me and looking me full in the face, so that my studies would begin before rising."

=) On that note, I think I'll work on the garden today, and prepare a bed or two for some flowers. =)

bb

P.S. John Muir quotes courtesy of the Sierra Club.