December Rains

Santa Has a Tree for Me

Our Tree is Tagged & Legal

Frozen Grouse Creek on Dec. 5, 2015

Swollen Grouse Creek on Dec. 9, 2015

Pooling Flood Water

Nearing the Bridge

Churning & Muddy

Swollen Waves

Road Wash Out

A thin crust of ice clings to shadows as Todd and I shop for a Christmas tree. He likes the firs with their short needles, and I like the thick pines. We measure height with our eyes and try to imagine this one or that in our living room.

Finally, we agree on a tree and he gets the handsaw.

Our lot is the wide open Kiniksu National Forest, and we have a $5 permit with a "Merry Christmas" greeting from the Forest Service. It might lack mugs of cocoa or a red-suited Santa you'd find in town, but I like shopping for a tree in the forest.

Until I look down and see lynx tracks. That's when I notice the deer carcass and head to the truck. No way do I want to get caught between a hungry wild cat and her dinner. We pick another tree, and I say I like it better. It's better because it's not located in the lynx dining room.

Turns out it's a hemlock. Not a bad choice, but we are both surprised as we load it in the truck. We have to carry it because where there's not snow in shadows, there's mud. Two winters ago we had to trek through waist deep snow to find our Christmas tree. Now we are driving along Grouse Creek, tires slipping on mud.

We cut the tree on Saturday because we had a lull in the drizzling rain. On Sunday it returned. Though I wait for it to turn to snow, the rain continues to patter on our metal roof. The moisture is needed, but so is snow. Without the cold, the water saturates the ground. Snow is like a container and it (should) release the moisture as spring thaw comes on gradually.

Last year the thaw came early and quick. By the time the rivers would normally be close to flood stage, we were entering a drought. Yet, if you look at precipitation, we had a "normal" year. Cold plays a dynamic role in our Inland Pacific Northwest climate.

At 2 am last night it was 52 degree F. Crazy warm! And the rain poured relentlessly. The flooding began a few hours later. We went up both the Pack River and Grouse Creek to marvel at the natural disaster. The road we had just slipped down with our tree a few days ago is gone in places. The icy river is now churning pale chocolate milk. Logs look like sticks riding the rapids.

When the road washed out before us, Todd kept driving. Yes, I panicked. He found it funny. The only way I could calm down was to point my camera and film. Watching the screen diverted my eyes from watching the washout road. Not a prize-winning piece of journalism, but you can watch the video here.

There's something unnerving about how quickly water can displace rock. It's as if water plays nicely and goes through proper channels only because it agrees to this arrangement. We build up around it and one day water turns rebellious and destroys all we've built -- bridges, road, houses, pastures.

It's receding and we'll muck out the debris water left in it's wake. At least we got our Christmas Tree before the road washed out.

The photos I'm sharing via Abracabadra's Wordless Wednesday Link up. The photos are mine, as well as the words.

I'm not really word-less.

Silver and Gold

Following the White Truck Across Nevada

Roman Nose Lake

Visiting Family

Silver & Gold

Weasels Hiding in the Rocks

All Quiet on the Lake

Except for the Curious GSP

Treeless after Nearly 50 Years

White Truck's First Idaho Adventure

Sniffing the Gold

Ghostly Mist on the Ridge

"Make new friends, 
 but keep the old.
One is silver, 
the other is gold."

"Make New Friends" is a scout song that comes to mind as I scan the silver rocks and gold tree leaves of Roman Nose Lake. Silver and gold, silver and gold.

A few weeks back we had dinner and ice cream with old friends, shared laughs about long ago antics and marveled how much silver we are all getting.

We brought back the Mills farm truck from Sandblow Dairy in Fallon, Nevada. My inlaws have retired and gifted us with the truck at a time we could use the gift. The best gift, though was visiting with family and old friends.

We returned and had our first truck adventure. Todd's brother Gee and his wife Kathy drove up from Nevada in our wake and it was a pleasure to share with them our beautiful mountains and valleys.

We laughed about elevations, though. While the mountains are steep here, the valley floors are relatively low. We live at about 2,200 feet above sea level in Elmira. Our mountains go straight up to 5,000 and 7,000 feet in elevation. Stunning.

Yet, if you consider Nevada, the elevation of Fallon sits on a basin already 4,000 feet high. Those Great Basin ranges have mountains as tall as almost 12,000 feet. Many are surprised to realize how mountainous that state is and why it is called a high mountain desert.

No desert here in the Inland Pacific Northwest, though we continue to be unseasonably dry. Clouds and mist have returned but lack rainfall typical of this season. It's warm for October, too. We are concerned for the snow pack which requires lower temperatures, heavier precipitation and a slow spring.

Without it, we are in danger of another bad fire season.

Up on the Roman Nose, the peak itself remains bald of forest. In 1967 the Sundance Fire burned so hot -- a raging firestorm -- that nothing has grown back to replace the timber lost. Two men died up there, dozing a fireline when the fire roared over the peak like a flaming hurricane. A third man, on lookout at the station on the peak, managed to get into rock crevices deep enough to have survived.

When I visit the quiet alpine lake in the treeless bowl, I can't help but think of those who fight fires. Some win. Some do not. I pray for a heavy snowpack.

We met new friends at Laughing Dog Brewery. We always meet the most interesting people there. This young couple, newly married, have a six month old Springer Spaniel. Dogs are welcome in the tasting room. We make many new canine friends, too. The young man, so full of life yet, a college baseball player, new wife, new dog, just visited Costa Rica...he's a fire fighter.

There's something so youthful and courageous about those who fight the flames. He tells us he spent a good month on the fires in the St. Jo region. That's steep terrain. He says he loves to hike and it was nothing. Yet, it is everything he places on the line. His life.

Up there on the Roman Nose the ghosts of fire fighters are silent. Their memory hangs in the mist. And I bid them farewell, until we return next spring, hopeful of moisture and huckleberries. Hopeful of a reprieve from fires.

Linking up with Abracabadra for Wordless Wednesday. All photos (including the drive-by shot) by Charli Mills.

What's This?

Mum + Visiting Daughter = Happiness

Water Over Rocks in Grouse Creek

Patient Son-in-Law Waiting for Slow Hiker

Diamonds might be a girl's best friend, but rocks are mine.

This past Mother's Day will go down in the record books as one of the best. It's hard to top the morning my then nine-year-old son woke me up to beer and cornflakes, or any Mother's Day spent with all three of my children and their father. Rocks tip the scale.

Allison and her husband Drew flew out from Michigan to celebrate May. My daughter Brianna turns 25 tomorrow, a quarter of a century old, and I'm closing in on half a century next Thursday. So for one blissful weekend we gathered in Elmira, sans the Bro who is hard at work on his masters in psychology, for food, games and rock hunting.

My favorite game (after Settlers of Catan) is to play "What's This?" with Allison and Drew who are both trained geologists. Drew did his masters work in the northern Rockies so he is especially in tune to answer. Imagine getting a play day with an expert in the area of your extreme interest.

The following photos and captions explain our rock adventure on Grouse Creek where we hiked to a natural grotto and waterfall just 15 miles from Elmira Pond.  

Linking up with Abracabadra for Wordless Wednesday with my own photos shot with my smartypants phone.

Allison and Barley on the Rocks in the Grotto

Around the Corner is a Waterfall

Deposit of Large Gravel from High Waters

Following a Metamorphic Contact

Quartz (Lighter) Pushing Up Through Basalt (Darker)

Geologists Checking out Intrusions

Vein of Quartz

Reading the Rock

An Inclusion (Already Forgot What It Is Called)

Looking at Granite

Looking for Metasediments

Best Find in the Grotto

What's This? The Men Cooked Quiche & Crab Benedict!

Where the Grass is Green

Fairbury Cemetery

Prairie View From Fairbury Cemetery

Green Grass of a Peaceful Setting

Mary

Common Grave

Finding the Graves

Recording the Story

Finding My Granduncle Cob

East Station at Rock Creek

On the Trail of a Story

Clipped green grass covers the graves of my 4th-great grandaunt and 4th-great granduncle in Fairbury, Nebraska. The setting sun reflects colorful shafts of light, illuminating the long shadows of trees and gravestones. It's peaceful as a Victorian park; a proper resting ground for a couple who endured the best and worst of times in their decade of marriage.

The sun shone down with gladdening rays/ Sweet breezes fanned its groves/ and cheerful birds beguiled the days/ In gleeful songs of love. ~ Jas. McC.

Who knows where the grass is greener? Ask a horse or a heifer and they'll tell you it tastes sweetest beyond the fence. Ask a man with an itch to seek a better life or more excitement and he'll tell you it's greener out west. Ask a wife betrayed and she might remain as tight-lipped as the mistress, but with eyes red-rimmed from crying.

I'll see the forest like a dove/ And weep there for his sake,/ And wail my disappointed love/ Until this heart will break. ~ Jas. McC.

Having traveled from Idaho to Nebraska to find this resting spot, I look at the grave of Mary Green McCanles Hughes and read what is omitted from etched granite. Her stone renounces all her surnames. She was born a Green in the Blue Ridge region of western North Carolina. At the age of 17 she married D. C. McCanles and before she was 30 she was a widow on the tumultuous prairie with five children to raise. She married John Hughes a few years later, had a daughter and then divorced him.

Her granite gravestone reads simply, Mary.

Yet, telling beyond her name is that she still felt connected to the North Carolinian man she loved and married as a mountain girl. Despite the betrayal, the stunning death, the Awful War, the tribulations of pioneer homesteading, she still lay claim in death to her position: wife of D. C. McCanles.

May some kind Seraph on his flight/ Light on our earthly plain, In rapturous love our souls unite,/ And bring past joys again. ~ Jas. McC.

Mary's grave settles into the lawn next to her husband's. If you didn't know the story, it might be odd to see a single gravestone etched with the names of two men: D.C. McCanles and James Woods July 12, 1861. That's it. No claim to fame such as, "First man shot and killed by Wild Bill Hickok" or "Notorious Gang" or "Cheats on wife and gets shot."

 But woe to her that stabbed my peace,/ And crushed my youthful joy,/ My sorrow and my tears increase/ And my fond hopes destroy. ~ Jas. McC.

I'm going to tell you the story...but not today. It's an historical work of fiction called, Rock Creek. And I'm writing it from Elmira Pond after years of tinkering with research out of curiosity. Both Mary and D. C. McCanles are related to me through both my Green and McCanles lines so I've known about the incident for a while. It was through writing flash fiction that I began to see a story emerge.

My big questions revolve around greener pastures. Why did D. C. have an affair? Why did he leave North Carolina? Why settle at Rock Creek? Why did Mary follow? To understand D. C. and his women is to better understand why D. C. and Hickok came to violence.

Where the grass is greenest is where the story holds its enigma, waiting to be explored and understood.

NOTE: Verses are excerpts from poetry by my 5th-greatgrandfather, James McCanles. He was the father of D. C. whom I call Cob in my WIP. Cob is a family nickname, short for his middle name Colbert. The poetry is from my own personal collection, a gift from my Grandfather Sonny, along with his research and notes about the 1861 incident. Photos are from my recent trip to Nebraska. Thanks to my research companions for finding and documenting these graves with me.

Herding Horses

Rain Returns

Muddy Palomino

Fussing Wet Sorrel

Beautiful Booties

Snapper the Mare

Beary the Mare

Resting at Gate

Grass is Always Greener Over the Fence

Fence Posts Make Good Scratching Posts

Always Curious

Gentle

Licking the Dog

Rest or Attempted Murder?

Misty Morning Greeting

Pond Spotting

Note Which One is All Drama

A Horse and Her Cat

Rain slides silently down my window and morning looks more like evening. The view is blurred, the grass greener and shiny headlights bob as trucks speed past. It feels good. After the dry, hot season, the Pacific Northwest has returned to northern Idaho.

Two muddy mares are less content about the rain than I am, though. A palomino shows the dirt like a farmer wearing buff-colored overalls. She's a canvas of mud from the pasture and pond. Yet, she nibbles at what clumps of clover remain unabashedly.

On the other hand, the sorrel fusses like a trophy wife experiencing a bad hair day. Rain-stained, she drops to her knees and rolls in an attempt to rejuvenate her damp hide. Kicking her hooves toward sodden clouds seems futile. She rises, shakes and drops to roll one more time.

No matter the weather, they are gorgeous and I never tire of noticing how well they are matched to Elmira Pond as if I shopped the Pottery Barn for the pair. Golden-white and golden-red, they grace this place with powerful beauty, hides glinting in the sunshine.

Photographing horses, brushing horses, nuzzling horses are all activities that I rate higher than watching television. They are my entertainment (good thing since I have no cable). However, herding horses I'd rate down there with hauling wood in in a winter squall or mucking a barn.

Early mornings are relatively quiet. The back neighbors got a rooster a few months ago and not too long ago an eagle fledged its nearby nest. One crows at dawn and the other pipes like a shrilly flute. It's an odd duet led by the rooster. Sometimes the corvids join in, but I think they are really laughing.

But this particular morning song is accentuated by the constant blasts of an 18-wheeler's sonorous horn followed by the squeal of tires as a truck brakes. Not a good sound. Todd flees bed like the Army Ranger he used to be--always ready--and is halfway downstairs by the time I reach the bedroom window.

He's outside and has a visual on the horses. Both mares are in the back pasture. Slowly, I dress and keep looking out the window at the empty north pasture. Todd walks to the two-lane faded highway and sees fresh skid-marks. He was worried that the young bull moose that hangs out by our house had been hit. But no such sign.

As he walks the fence, the horses trot over to greet him. The mares are friendly, often licking our dogs as if to claim the two canines as foals. They expect scratches and rubs at the fence. A pretty picture unfolds--my shirtless gallant husband willing to rescue a moose at dawn, two mares with ears perked and tails aloft, morning light filtering through pines to illuminate the scene like a Thomas Kincade puzzle.

Then the sorrel steps right out behind Todd. That's the moment he realizes the moose must have been scared by the honking, taking out a corner post and snapping three lines of wire. The mares confirm that the gaping hole is big enough for a moose--or two horses.

Horses, creatures of beauty, intelligence and sociability, become giddy middle-schoolers let loose at a theme park without adult supervision. Todd tries to herd them back through the gap, but they blow past him, tails up like flags and they are off running behind Elmira Schoolhouse. Todd shouts my name as if I'm the family horse-whisperer.

A born buckaroo; not a miracle worker.

Half dressed, as in pants and pj top, I shove my feet quickly into my Keens set by the door and I'm headed to the gate that leads to the north pasture. By this time our neighbor, Mr. Rooster Owner, is at the main entrance, opening the double gates as if Todd is going to catch up anytime soon to two galloping horses--free at last, free at last! I close the north pasture that is now compromised.

Mr. Rooster Owner is headed to work so off he drives, leaving me to mind the gate. Twice I see the palomino across the huge meadow that spans north beneath the power lines. I call, "Bear-y, Bear-y," only to realize--twice--that it's my shirtless husband. He's not amused and I can tell from half a mile off.

Todd returns pony-less, and declares his need for coffee. He lost their tracks beyond the school. We go back inside, coffee up and then cowboy up. We only have one halter and a dog lead, but I grab what we have and we head north in the car. At the Elmira Store two miles down the road we turn left onto a dirt road hoping to see horse tracks. Better than that, we see two horses!

I hop out, but the mares spy the halter and shy away. The palomino blasts by and Todd blocks the road next to our car. He has his hands on her which is sort of "caught" to the perspective of a horse. The sorrel goes up the embankment. She lets me approach and I get the lead around her neck. We walk to Todd and Beary, but are above them on the embankment.

Stretching--not my idea of morning exercises--I manage to give Todd the halter but Army Ranger can't figure it out. It's as if I handed him knitting needles and said make me a scarf. After I tease him, we pass leads to horses and now I'm on the road with the palomino deftly haltering her until--what's that knot? I look to Todd and admit that I can't remember it. Army Ranger smirks and knots the halter closed for me.

With both horses in a precarious position--one up, one down the embankment, Todd says, "Just follow the power lines home." He hops in the car and drives back out the dirt track, leaving me to ponder why I hate phrases that begin with the word, "just." Coaxing Beary up the embankment both horses rush me like linebackers.

Remembering my buckaroo days I push back and give them my presence. They accept my bid for leadership and both follow as we begin walking through grass and weeds up a hill, down its sloping flank, through a bog, across an abandoned ranch with snarled barb-wire and...would you look at all the dog poop!

Dog poop...why would there be dog poop out here. Honestly, it looks like the dog yard of a sled musher. The horses begin to prance, nostrils flare and I step across hairy dog droppings. Hairy. I know that the coyotes live across the tracks to the east and the wolves to the west. I'm on the west side. I also know the size of piles my daughter's 90-pound

Free Enough

Back in the Mists of Elmira

huskies leave and these hairy piles are larger.

Just as I think the den must be nearby an eagle screeches loud enough for me to understand why our forefathers chose this bird to represent our nation. It's formidable. Not only is a wolf den nearby but so is the eagle nest. All I need now is for the rooster to jump out of the brush and attack us. Or the moose.

It's been a long time since feeling this scared. Thing is, when herding horses you have to contain your fear or they will pick it up and run with it. As in, run me over and gallop away. I talk to the horses in the soothing voice of a first responder at the scene of an horrific accident. Soon, I see Elmira Pond glinting in the distance.

With home in sight I feel like singing Barry Manilow (Looks Like We Made It), but that's not very buckaroo-like. Home, home on the range, where wolves, roosters, moose and run-away horses play...is more acceptable.

I shut the gates, release the mares and feel framed in the beauty of this place once again.