Safe for Another 500 Years?

It's been feeling a lot like Seattle around here.

This bucket was empty on Monday. It has been in my yard all week catching rain. That's about 12 inches of rain. Holy cow.

This is what our creek looked like: (it's normally 2 feet across)

Some wonderful guys- Aaron Gray of IHS Excavating and his buddy, Ronnie Hicks, held a big fundraiser to rebuild our road recently. They got about $50,000 worth of donated machinery, road base, and volunteer operators to raise the road about 3 feet. They just finished last weekend. Our driveway was BEAUTIFUL. It looked like a superhighway. For 5 days. 

Here's what it looks like today:

from the side

from the top

For five days, the flood waters pummeled it, and it finally gave way. 

The thing is, we wouldn't have a road AT ALL if not for these awesome guys. They re-routed the water away from the road so well that only in places where the road crosses the river is there a problem. And, so, we rebuild again. At least we have a dry house. That's a lot.

Summer Neighbors

I've met a few new neighbors on my walks lately:

Look closely at the dashboard of our neighbor's truck....

 Here's a close-up. It's Arvin and his buddies! (Our sweet neighbors didn't think this was as cute as I did...)

This little guy kept himself flattened, hoping to not be seen. 

And, one of my favorite summer birds! A western tanager. 

After the Fire Cometh the Flood

OK, so this is how our week went:

Sunday: Torrential rainstorm. 8/10 inch in 20 minutes. Scary flooding.

Water was running off the hill, into the yard, creating a waterfall off the rock wall and down the steps. My tadpoles were getting swept out to sea.

We could've sold white-water float trip tickets for our tiny creek. (Photos just can't capture it....)

And this truck-swallowing hole appeared in the road- one of a lot of places it washed out



Monday: Franticly scanning the internet for vacation homes for rent RIGHT NOW in Maui. OK, not really, but there was some serious contemplative assessment in action.

Tuesday: Decided we are definitely not up for making 58 round-trips of 3 hours each to get enough sand bags to protect the house(!) (All the sand-bag staging stations are far from us)


Wednesday: Rented a trackhoe...again. This amazing little beauty (with a price tag of 50 grand) can move bass drum-sized rocks like nobody's business. Just in case you ever need bass-drum sized rocks moved.




With it we built a berm. About 80-100 feet long and four feet high. And dug out the creek.

And created a diversion drainage by cutting into the creek-side hill about 5 feet deep, and 6 feet wide.


Needless to say, we've had nary a drop of rain since.

Whew.

River of Logs

I haven't written in a while because we've been BUSY. The short, heavy rain we had last week (about 3/4 inch in 20 minutes) led to quite a flood in our post-wildfire property.

I knew it was coming down hard, but when I looked out the back window, I was still shocked. There was a river of black dirt 10-20 feet wide crashing down the hillside in a usually dry stream bed.

By then, water was pouring over the road.

What I didn't know then, was that it was washing down over 100 logs- heavy green timber cut in 6 foot lengths by the neighbor after the burn. (up to 24 inch diameter)

They all got stockpiled in our pond- threatening to wash out the driveway.

So, guess who got to play on a tractor all week?  Unfortunately, we figure the flood carried about 600 cubic meters of ash, sand and soil to our creek bed, so it's been hard to make a dent in it. But, Paul was able to move the logs and clear a gully, so water can at least get through and not take out the road or driveway next time it rains.

Anybody got a dump truck? Or need some nice, black soil? It's free! ;)

The Alchemy of Rain

We've had some great rains in the last month. The Wednesday before last, heavy rain turned our little creeks into dark chocolate caldrens. When they fury dissipated, we were left with whole new ash-sand bars and a ripped-out phone line.

But the rain precipitated (ha!) some other things, too.

rock slides (good thing I'm not wearing stilettos today!)

Salamanders! OK, I know these guys are hard to see...but they are about a foot long, green and black, and pretty happy to have a pond this year, I think! This is the first time I've seen them- probably because on a "normal" year, the pond is warmer and full of algae by the time they are romping around.

 ...and LOTS of flowers!

The Big Bear Caper

I always wondered why, when I'm at the top of a mountain ridge, I never see any wildlife. It doesn't make sense. I see the elk, deer, cougar and bear scat on the ground. But, when I'm hiking and look down on a distant meadow, they are always empty.

Except this one time...

We were hiking up a steep, rocky ridge near our house, and when we reached the top, as usual, I scanned all the open meadow areas for critters. Nothing. Then- ah! Some movement! As I squinted to see what it was, it came right out into a clearing. A bear!  A BIG bear!

I was so excited, until I realized that it was making a bee-line for our neighbor's house. Now, these wonderful neighbors are retired. They feed half the hummingbirds migrating through Colorado, I'm sure of it. They normally have 8 feeders out, and by July, every feeder has a bird at every station. It's a wonder no one has gotten an eyeball skewered walking around their porch, there are so many birds swarming.

On this particular day, our neighbors had mentioned that they would be in town. I knew their feeders would be out (they go in at night) and calling that bear like a honey-lullaby. I also knew he would break every one in the process of drinking them, worse, associate humans with food. So, quick as we could, we scrambled down the steep rocks and grassy slope, jumped in our good 'ol truck and drove up to the neighbors.

When we got there, 10 minutes after we saw the bear, our neighbor came out smiling.
"Hi! What are you two up to today?" She said, blissfully unaware.

"Rescuing your hummingbird feeders from a huge bear because you're not home." I replied.

He was probably sitting up the hill listening to us and planning a midnight raid, but we'll never know. None of us saw that bear again that day.

Black holes and Miracle Plants (Wildfire Part 4)

Here's how the burn area looks today:

 Holes created form burn-out tree roots made walking in the snow interesting...
some of them are big!

pioneer crocus flower - taking the lead in forest restoration

the meadows are coming back fast

bluebells also taking the lead