Annadel, Needing Rain :-)
This post shows you some of the trails and views of my neighborhood state park, Annadel. All the shots were taken on two hikes, a week apart – the same two hikes from which came that comparison of the rocks & gully before and after the first rains, about a week ago. The date of the hike in question is in each photo’s title (the 8th and 14th of November). Immediately below you can see a panorama of Lake Ilsanjo, which sits in a bowl fairly high near the center of the park, and then three shots of which one was taken before and the others taken after the first rain. Sorry that I didn’t take shots that allow a better comparison of water level in thelake, but you can see more green, for sure :-). That said, we had the one inch+ nearly three weeks ago, and not a drop since. Think rainy thoughts for us, please…
Beauty & The Burn.6
See if you can identify what in this photo directly experienced one of our recent global-warming-induced wildfires 🙂
County Views.67
Yes, a bit of a rivers theme to encourage more rain: the egrets (can someone tell me if I’ve mis-identified them, please?) only reappeared after our first inch or so of rain, about ten days ago. We must hope for more, in part so they’ll hang out a bit longer here :-).
County Views: Turkey Special
For my readers not familiar with the American customs of thanksgiving: most families eat a whole turkey that day. Yes, it’s conspicuous consumption, and yes, the turkeys have been specially bred over generations to be quite different and have more “light meat” than these turkeys likely would, if a mountain lion ever noticed the local buffet available to it if it just settled in for some good hunting. 🙂 Me, I’m vegetarian so it’s nothing to me either way. Still: enjoy, those of you to whom the turkey makes the holiday. And if your bandwidth is sufficient, you can tell me how many you count as this large group moves past:
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.
(so much world, so little time....) 