County Views: Beauty & The Burn
So we’re getting a bit more rain yesterday & today: Santa Rosa itself may reach the magic inch of rainfall before today is out. Thus, I’ve decided it may be safe for me to post these remaining photos I took in the days and weeks after the Glass Fire exploded into Santa Rosa over the Mayacamas Mountains. (Safe, in the sense that it’s less likely yet another fire will explode over the mountains. Though one really never knows, these days…) Somewhere in each of these photos you can see the burned ridges and eastern slopes of the range that separates us from Napa county, the view I see from my home, from my bike rides and hikes around most of this central part of the county. Most of it’s what I called twiced-burned, in a post not long ago.
I’ve recently been on many a hike, alone or with friends, where I know how to detect the marks from the Nuns and Tubbs fires three years ago. Things can grow back, so long as there’s time and enough rain to regrow. This landscape and ecosystem evolved with fire, but it did that evolving before our human pollution started tipping the balance and changing the atmosphere so very much. I wonder how much of this beauty our current childrens’ great-grandchildren will be able to see still. I wonder how many of our fellow citizens actually even care to ask themselves these questions and consider changing their habits and patterns to help preserve more for our future generations.
Beginning of the End
We’re told the fire season officially ends when one inch of rain has fallen. I haven’t determined if this is one inch from a single storm, or a cumulative inch. Either way: even if we love the clear weather in this year of covid so that it’s easier to get out for walks, hikes, bike-rides, tennis or what have you…most of us have eagerly watched the skies for the kinds of clouds that, here in northern California in the late dry season, might drop real rain.
I’ve consciously put myself out of doors with no easy recourse to dryness on the days when brief, scant showers were possible: a week ago I biked seven miles away for lunch with friends, taking only my waterproof windbreaker, and indeed a few raindrops fell on my head and my bike: but not measurable rainfall, yet… Two days later, I went for a half-day hike without even the windbreaker, and was rewarded with more scattered showers that even turned to sleet! (You can see said sleet on my sleeve, and on the ground, if you look closely enough in the photos below. And yes, it’s pathetic that we’re driven to excitement over a few raindrops. We know this. Humor us.) Yesterday our good intentions were rewarded, with about .33 of an inch here in Santa Rosa. Closer to the coast, whence comes this moisture, they were blessed with that magic inch or so of rain. Still: even 1/3 of an inch is such better news than, say, another evacuation warning or more 24-hour-news-cycle stories about, say, vote recounts. So, with apologies to true wetlanders for whom the sight of raindrops beading on plants is nothing special, here’s my paean to the beginning of the end of…well, at least this particular fire season, and maybe a few other things that have been troubling our local community in recent years.
And for those with the bandwidth, the bonus video director’s cut version of “it rained in California yesterday!” 🙂
County Views.48
Knowing I needed things to keep me busy after the election, I had put up a few sourdough sponges on Tuesday morning, which yesterday became eight of the twelve loaves you see above. Somehow, the demands of my little colony of wild yeast, the need to knead the dough and encourage the yeasties to go forth and multiply in the new flour I’d fed them, was a good antidote to obsessively watching vote-count updates. Furthermore, it’s clear we Americans around the nation need to try to find a few things that we can actually agree on. To the classics of apple pie and baseball, might I suggest adding bread and beauty (beauty = yesterday’s post)? (With apologies to any readers with celiac disease or gluten intolerance…if you’re just anti-carb, well, try one of the round zucchini loaves & let me know…) The little yellow tea loaves are semolina-cranberry quick breads; the rounded zucchini loaves are sourdough base with a commercial-yeast boost, and the multi-grain are the first of my sourdough loaves that pleasantly surprised me with their robust rise, even before the oven boost. Arise, wild yeast, and teach us Americans a thing or two about making the best of mucky circumstances… 🙂 I began this little colony of yeast (also known as a sourdough starter) shortly after returning from Bangladesh – before then, I’d been baking since at least the Ford presidency, but always with commercial yeast and their fairly-straightforward kneading & rising realities. Learning the needs of my colony of wild yeast is a welcome combination of biology experiment, lesson in patience, and introduction to new mysteries. May we all find fruitful and healthy distractions when needed. 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 