Quirky thoughts from an old man.
The Station Fire has changed the habitat of the animals who live in the San Gabriel Mountains and we are having more bear sighting and a small herd of bucks have been grazing the front yards during the day. I know that deer are a common sight in Ohio, Georgia and Virginia but in suburban Los Angeles deer sightings are as rare as honest politicians.
A deer is behind the tree just to the left of my mailbox
through my gate into Lew’s front yard
That will be three bucks
Life is Good
NASA sent a drone over the Station Fire and compiled this very cool map showing the extent of the fire:
Want more details? Go to the NASA site. Your tax dollars at work.
The Prickly Pear Cacti in Eaton Canyon
have a white mold looking stuff on them. This years there is a lot of it.
Inside the mold is a small sac of red liquid created by a bug called: Cochineal-dactylopius coccus.
The red liquid used to be the only really good source of red dye and was one of the early exports from the “New World” to Spain. It still is used as a red dye in foods. So when you eat red velvet cake part of what you are eating is bugs. More information
I see an opportunity for local, natural, organic, color dyes to sell at farmers markets.
Rebecca and I were hiking up the Mount Wilson Toll Road last Friday and we saw this deer near the upper slide.
We walked up the newly bulldozed road (Click here to Read that wonderful story) and we saw him peeking at us over the ridge:
Then finally as we looked down off the road we saw him again wandering off:
Clearly this is a deer who does not feel threatened by humans.
The most common adjectives about the Station Fire are that it is scary, destructive, wild, voracious, raging and uncontrolled. These are all true but they contain some hyperbole and not a little anthropomorphism.
The San Gabriels on 8/31 from Kaiser Sunset
I’d like to propose a few others adjectives that we should also be hearing. The Station fire is: normal, useful, cyclical and natural. We live in a very arid region. Fires were a natural part of the environmental cycle long before humans arrived here. Fire experts and environmentalists now agree that suppressing every fire means that fuel will accumulate and when they do finally occur they’ll be bigger and hotter. Where we live fires will happen in the same way that snow will happen in Buffalo, New York.
The residents who live near the San Gabriel Mountains should see a positive in the Station Fire for three reasons: First it is happening at the beginning of the fire season when the Santa Ana winds aren’t blowing. Second we have some of the world best trained, financed and equipped fire fighters working to save us and our structures. And third this fires, which is doing very little damage to people or property, will make the West San Gabriel Mountains much less likely to have a massive burn for the next ten or twenty years.
A smoke ball above Mt Wilson
My friend who lives in upstate New York called to make sure we were ok. He asked me “Why would you live in a place that has fires and earthquakes?” I answered “Why would you live in a place that has winter?”
If you are looking for information on the Station Fire here are a few resources you can try:
My Blog about reopening the Mount Wilson Toll Road has a few pictures and my claim to prescience.
The Altadena Blog has very timely information about the fire
The Mt Wilson Towercam has real-time pictures of the Summit of Mt Wilson
And the LA Times site has Maps and Photos that are only a few hours out of date
We feel pretty safe here in Sierra Madre Villa. The wind is low, the fire is at least five miles away uphill and the fire fighting resources are well organized to save structures. It is smoky, the sky color is eerie and the noise of the fire plane and helicopters creates a sense of urgency but we are safe. The television news exacerbates the sense of drama and urgency. We have friends in La Canada who were evacuated but they are now back home and everything is fine.
Yesterday Corina Knoll from the LA Times called and interviewed me for a story about the Mt Wilson Toll Road. Today there is a nice story in the Times on Line that quotes me and mentions my blog about the trail.
It has been a long wait but it is nice to know that the Toll Road is finally reopening. Perhaps my gadfly blog had a tiny effect on the outcome. Click here to see my Mount Wilson Toll Road Informer Blog. Or here to learn the answer to one of the oldest rhetorical questions in the world.
This is the link to the story about Gabion Baskets I wrote on The Mount WIlson Toll Road Informer
This is the teaser picture:
At least you got a new word out of it.
This one appeared at the top of the horse trail where it intersects the Mount Wilson Toll Road:
it was cleverly situated to make the clump of grass work as hair. The ancients are a mysterious people. The other documented dirtogylph.
One of the threads I have developed that is gaining some readership is about re-opening the Mount Wilson Toll Road. To better serve that group I have started a new site called:
The Mount Wilson Toll Road Informer
It is now three years since the slide that closed the trail and it does not appear that there is any progress toward reopening it. I’ll be inserting links to this new site on all the Mt Wilson Trail posts on Swcamborne and posting new stories about the Toll Road on the MWTRI. (I love new acronyms, pronounced “moo-tree”)