July 25 (1981, 1982, 2005, 2008)
Retrospection and Circumspection

7/25/81 [...]

Last night I only touched briefly on that looking-back of a few days ago; I was doing some new looking-back, remembering what a process it was just to get in to this area through the thick brush. Back in '75, clearing an old logging road completely overgrown with ceanothus. Cutting a trail in to the cliffs with a shovel. The heavy acorn crop of that fall. The glory of fall. I jumped forward in time to the fall of '76 ~ looking at the mandala window as I laid here on the couch [...] reminded me of the process of making the window and installing it. Craig and Tim helped me that day. I remembered the opening I had left in the framing was larger than the mandala window. How much? I remembered that I had been hurrying to close in the cabin before the winter storms hit. That, in fact, I took the time to make the window, inside Tim's garage in Grass Valley, because just such a storm had arrived and my progress on the roof framing had been arrested until the rains stopped. I wondered if I had come out here to the cabin to check measurements before installing the window. A picture came to mind of doing just that, coming alone and standing on the floor, gazing at the big hole in the wall where it would go, the smell of wet forest and cliffs and lumber spicing the air, the play of shadows on the floor ~ suddenly the memory became sharp, clear, and I was surprised, exclaiming softly, ‘I remember ~ I remember what it was like’ ~ because along with the memories of the sights and sounds and smells, I remembered my emotional state at that time, the sense of, how can I live without sharing this beauty, this love, this life, this vision? It was incomprehensible to me. [...]

The other night around sunset — a canyon wren came inside. I opened all the windows and offered it my finger for a perch. It hopped on briefly, then out the door.”


“7/25/82 Rick and Aki stopped by yesterday and we went out to Big Valley Bluff late in the afternoon. Saw an immature eagle, and gathered quartz crystals. [...]

I have determined that the weird Barking Yelping Bird of Large Size that I've heard at night here on the edge of the canyon is a Spotted Owl. For years it's been a puzzle to me. Sounded so tropical.”


July 25, 2005
Two Views, Piperia


White-flowered Rein Orchid
(Piperia candida)

Two Frogs
(Rana boylii)

“At a spring-fed pool, the very headwaters of a stream dropping over 2000' in two miles to the North Fork American River.”

July 25, 2008


The foothill yellow-legged frog (Rana boylii) is now an IUCN ‘near threatened’ species:
This species has probably been extirpated from the Tehacahapi Mountains southwards, and there have also been severe declines in the central Sierra foothills of California (Drost and Fellers 1996). It is now rare or absent in Oregon (Leonard et al. 1993), moderately common in north-western California and the northern Sierra foothills, and rare or absent in the central and southern Sierra foothills. This species was first recorded in Mexico three decades ago, but almost nothing is known about its biology there.
Read more at: http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/19175/0


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