Alpine Pedal-Path Morning---Slightly Smoky

~Wildfire Smoke from Upstate~

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

For the past couple of mornings smoke has been blowing into the valley from the wildfires burning in the more northern parts of the state, near Santa Cruz, and Santa Maria, to name a couple of them.

We started off this morning intending to ride around the lake but breathing the smoke at our end of the lake (east) was already bothering us a bit, and when we saw how thick it was on the west side, over the dam and Fawnskin, we decided to alter our plan and ride the Alpine Pedal-Path along the North shore instead.

So, our near 20 mile planned ride turned out to be somewhere between 10 & 15 miles instead, but still very enjoyable, as you will see.

~Sagebrush Delight~

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

It seems that everything has it's benefits, the smoke from the fires made for a gently-muted light this morning, almost as if I had a light-diffusing color-saturating filter on my camera.

A Meadow Along The Bike Path
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

We stopped for awhile by a little stream to contemplate the soft loveliness of a smoke-tinged light falling on this meadow, all the time acutely aware that the sources of this very smoke are causing great anxiety in other parts of California ( and I hope our friends in those parts are out of harms way).

Ancient Juniper - A Veteran Of Many Wildfires
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

This Western Juniper (Juniperus occidentalis) along the bike path is probably somewhere between 500 to 1,000 years old, and possibly older, which means it has lived through many, many wildfires during its life, and, as raggedy as it looks at the base, it's still very much alive. One tough old tree!

Enjoy your day...

Homey In The 'Hood On Sunday Morn....... Four Pictures Of Today

~LONG OVERDUE PROJECT~ Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

We've been sporadically working on this 'TOP SECRET' project for months so I've decided to de-classify it, making it available through our own sort of Public Information Act!

This is a gift for family members, and their baby boy, who was born back on January 11th!

I'm off to visit them by train next week and their gift still won't be finished! That's why I'm posting this now, so at least they know we really are working on something for them, and maybe as a bit of motivation for us too.

The project is a crib-sized quilt (if the baby grows up before we finish it maybe they can use it as a wall hanging) made in the same design & colors as a stained glass window I made for my parents almost 30 years ago (click here to see a photo of the window).

The above photo shows my part of the project, cutting out the paper patterns for the applique parts, and then tracing them onto the cloth and cutting the fabric pieces out.

For the pattern I printed out a full-size image of the design from our computer onto 28 sheets of heavy 8 1/2 X 11 paper stock and taped them all together.

~PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER~Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

Here's who does the real work!

The rectangular background panels have already been stitched together with charcoal bias tape added to define the seams, as the lead came would in an old window.

That was the easy part!

Now Peggy is assembling the 121 elements (plus batting & bias tape) for the applique portion of the quilt.

The vine, leaf, and floral parts will be applied over the background with extra layers of cotton batting to give dimensional relief. The white flower parts, and the green leaves, will have two extra layers of batting, and the stems one. All the applique pieces must also be bordered with charcoal bias tape.

Peggy is well-skilled with a sewing machine, but we aren't quilters, and this is a challenging experiment for us, making things up as we go along.

I'm hoping a little home-made treasure from one branch of the family can be extended to another part of the tree. So let's hope this thing comes out OK, because we're on the spot now.

It looks good so far...

WINTER GREENS UNDER RABBIT WIRE

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

Our winter beds of greens (spinach, lettuce, kale, swiss chard, beets-for greens, and some green onions) are well-established now, but, for the first time ever, we had to replant the original seedbeds because European Starlings descended upon the place and devoured the first planting as soon as they sprouted. We haven't had Starlings here until the past couple of years but now they're over-running the joint. So I fabricated these cages from rabbit wire, solving that problem, and they keep out the ground squirrels too, who have also moved into the neighborhood in the past two years.

We've already been using some of the baby spinach!

The plants will go dormant when the weather gets extremely cold, but we'll have early greens peaking up through the snow (let's hope we get snow) as early as January or February. A heartwarming sight!

~HAZY SUNDAY SUNRISE~ Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

For those of you wondering about the fire situation, here's a picture from about 7 A.M. today looking west toward the fire. Beyond that little peak to the far left, fires are still burning, with some containment reported on a few fronts. We are still not in any immediate danger, and, as you can see, today we only have some light smoky haze hanging over the alley.

SmokeRise...

7:30 A.M. Thursday

Click on photos to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

~A Smoky Morning Walk~

Peggy & Dallas, smiling through the smoke at 7:45 A.M.

We're all OK here!

Taking Flight In The Smoky Din

There wasn't enough light to really capture this Great Blue Heron taking flight but I like the image anyway.

The giant bird looks almost as awkward as the Sikorsky helicopter below. It's hard to believe either of them can actually fly.

I made the helicopter video below about 4:30 P.M. yesterday after riding my bicycle over to the airport and, by the time I got home, I was coughing and my chest was feeling a bit tight.

There was a lot of fine ash floating down, which doesn't seem as bad today.

Still very smoky though and you can imagine the noise around here with this steady stream of helicopters and fixed wing tankers.

Kind of like a war zone I imagine.

For friends and family that are concerned about what's going on here in Big Bear I'm posting some links to local news so you can stay updated.

KBHR RADIO - "THE BEAR"

THE BIG BEAR GRIZZLY NEWSPAPER

Deceptively Serene...

...for the time being

Click on photos to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

Looking north across Stanfield Marsh

Big Bear was deceptively calm at 7:20 this morning considering that the raging 'Slide' & 'Grass Valley' fires are burning just about 20 miles west of here. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed in those mountain communities nearest to our valley. We have good friends in both the Running Springs and Lake Arrowhead areas and I hope they haven't lost their homes. Yet more homes are surely burning even as I post this picture of tranquility.

A View to the west from the same location
An ominous layer of dark smoke lies over the San Bernardino Mountains west of the Big Bear Dam where much destruction is occurring. Because of the Santa Ana winds that have been blowing from the northeast, fanning these fires, we have had smoke free blue skies here throughtout the firestorms but that may be about to change.

The Santa Ana's have died down now and we'll most likely return to our normal westerly winds which will bring the smoke directly into big Bear.

A Rising Plume
This shot was made 15 minutes later & a 1/4 of a mile farther west along the shore of the marsh.
A plume of smoke begins rising in the general direction of Lake Arrowhead and I suspect that before today is over Big Bear will be a very smoky place.

Hopefully we won't get any strong westerlies or we may be in trouble here.

Very large fires are burning right over there and last I heard they were zero percent contained.

See post below for an update

A few hours later...

Smoke Moving Into Big Bear

Click on photos to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

Six hours after the 3 previous photos were taken smoke has moved into our valley.

Anxiety levels in Big Bear will be on the rise for the next several days now unless there's some dramatic improvement in the fire situation.

Number 715

For days now a steady stream of fire-fighting helicopters has been coming and going from the Big Bear Airport, just a few blocks from our house, but the urgency becomes somewhat more apparent when the wind blows your way.

I took this picture at 1:38 P.M. today just a couple of hundred yards from my front door.
If you're watching the news about the fires you'll see number 715 dropping water on the Slide Fire in Running Springs, maybe 5 minutes from here by air.

As you can see the smoke hadn't reached the airport, or our house yet, but it's coming.

Ignore the posting time for this one, it was actually posted at 3 P.M., but I wanted it below the other pictures for continuity.

Avalon, Catalina - May 10th 2007

AVALON - FROM THE PIER ON THURSDAY

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 by Jeff Stanford/L.A. Times

Most of you know that our son Jimmy lives in Avalon, on Catalina Island, with his girlfriend Sandra. Jimmy was out fishing Thursday when he first saw the smoke and I believe Sandra was at a ranch or stable outside of Avalon working with some horses. We talked with Jimmy about dusk Thursday evening as he was waiting at the pier with Sandra's brother Gregor. They had her cat and bird there with them, in cages, but didn't know exactly where Sandra was at the time. Apparently she showed up at the pier somewhat later and they were all evacuated on a Catalina Express boat at 11 P.M. They're staying with Sandra's sister in Southgate, so, everybody's safe & well, thankfully, and the beautiful historic town of Avalon has now been spared too.

I was also happy to learn that the first Bald Eagle chicks to hatch naturally on Catalina (earlier this year) since DDT wiped out the native populations decades ago were not harmed in the fire. However, it is not yet known what effects the fire will have on the endangered Island Kit Fox population, which is hanging on by a thread.

Fire season is upon us very early this year and Southern California, including our San Benardino Mountains, is a tinder box. Big Bear is in a virtual tie for its driest winter on record with 5.63 inches of precipitation when our average is 20.68 inches.

I'm just hoping for a good Monsoon Summer that gets us so wet the lightning can't ignite anything.

I don't know how life is going for all you other folks but there never seems to be a dull moment in our lives anymore. I'm reminded again of the old Roman curse, "May you live in interesting times". And it looks to me like times are getting more interesting by the day!

Now, where have we been all these weeks???

More computer problems! Somehow a piece of malignant high-risk spyware (one which I could find no way to remove) got past Norton and infected my computer. When I bought this computer in January it came with a free upgrade to Windows Vista which I was leary of installing because of possible compatibilty problems with some of my older software. Well, the spyware spurred me on to wipe my drive and start clean with Vista, and, just as I suspected, several of my programs were not compatible. I'm still rebuilding files and re-installing updated versions of my software. I finally have Photoshop installed again so maybe I can catch up a bit now on what's been going on around here.

Wildfires And Mountain Living...

Click on photo to enlarge

We've had several phone calls & e-mails from friends concerned about the ongoing wildfires near us, and wondering if Big Bear is being evacuated again, so I thought I'd post this photo taken today, at 2:59 P.M. The photo was taken about a half-mile northwest of our house, which is back in those trees, just below the little yellow asterisk I placed there.

The smoke column rising from the Millard Complex Fire looks quite ominous here looming over Big Bear Valley, but the wind is actually blowing toward the fire from my vantage point there at the east end of the Stanfield Marsh, and keeping it from moving into our area.

The most recent news I heard was that the Sawtooth and Millard fires had merged creating something like a 20 mile long front of flames, and that the two fires, now combined, have consumed a total of nearly 65,000 acres, 45 homes, and another 100+ outbuildings, mostly in the high desert to the east of us.

At its closest point, the fire is now about 8 miles east of the valley, and as long as the prevailing westerly winds continue blowing we should be OK here, but you never know, nature is always unpredictable.

We're somewhat accustomed to impending disaster though, having lived on the edge, in fire, flood, and earthquake country all of our lives, so this is just another of those semi-regular events.

It seems to me that almost any place one lives these days is prone to some sort of disaster; landslides, hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, gang violence, industrial chemical spills, terrorist attacks, war, floods, famine, fires, and earthquakes, so I guess we'll just stick with what we know.

In the early 1980s, Peggy and I stood side by side, by ourselves with a fire hose & nozzle, wet towels wrapped around our heads (a tip from the fire department that loaned us the hose), and flames all around, burning within a few yards of us, as we watered down and saved our friends home in Malibu Canyon, where were living at the time. And that's just one of several disasters we've lived through.

In the '60s, during one of Topanga Canyon's devastating floods, the house I lived in was buried by a landslide just seconds after I ran out the door, and the house we live in now survived the big '92 earthquake, structurally intact, but we sure had a mess to clean up inside, everything was upside down and broken.

So, if this fire does turn around and move in on us, you might find Peggy, Dallas, and I sitting out in the middle of the lake with a ringside seat and a cheap bottle of wine.

But Alas!

Poor Dallas is a teetotaler...