Disconnect - POWER POLES and other thoughts

Driving down the hill to Sonora I passed the area where the dead trees are being processed, chipped for shipment to Ultra Power so they can become ELECTRICITY!  And across the highway dozens of new STEEL poles which PG&E will be using to replace the current wooden poles.  I understand that this is a regular maintenance project; wooden poles have a "life" just like everything else on this planet.  After a certain period they do rot, but is the life expectancy of a steel pole a lot more?   We have so MANY trees being cut thanks to the FIVE kinds of beetle attacking our forests partially due to the DROUGHT but also because we "forgot" that this area can only support so many trees.  The motto of the USForest Service used to be "land of many uses" but not any more, timber cutting is a thing of the past except NOW!  Of course, the USFS isn't in the tree cutting business, they are leaving that up to CalTrans and PG&E.  Will BLM and USFS be as diligent removing the dead pines, firs, and cedars?  Good question, we will have to watch and wait.

One of my Post Office customers said that he and his two neighbors just had to remove 225 trees from their five lots (1/4 acre) in Cold Springs, just down the highway.  PG&E has allowed all the private loggers to use their crane and operators when they are not actively using them!
It will be green again by the time our grand children are adults, but possibly we might have learned not to let every little tree grow to the 60 foot heights of these now dead trees.

Even CalTrans was experiencing a "disconnect" as they had scheduled a paving project for the same area of highway that is being logged - 150 feet from the center line!  Often the loggers must drag the fallen trees down the highway to where they are stacking them for removal.  It is very interesting watching them "dance to the music of chain saws" while stopping traffic totally if it is a logging situation, or escorting one line of vehicles if it is a repaving crew!

Mountain Humor is where you find it...

 

FALL is in the AIR!

The cedars just over the fence, which surrounds the swimming pool here at The Rivers Resort in Strawberry, are dropping their “needles” about a month early!  So two or three times a day, depending on the breezes, one of us grabs the sweeper basket and skims the surface free of debris,!  And Tom mans the blower every morning to clear the deck area of the pesky, prickly needles, or sprays as the cedar debris is called according to the biologist at the Summit Ranger Station.

The logging crew that is taking out the dead trees for Cal-Trans is also clearing the state right of way of any leaning or distressed trees, so that the road can be a “fire-break” should we be so unlucky as to have a wild fire in our area.  The State of California a decade ago decided that the trees along the State Highways should be left “untouched” and consequently there has been NO FIRE BREAK space along the highways.  It even makes it difficult for the fire equipment to get from one side of a fire to the other as it will burn right to the asphalt, and then melt THAT.  So besides the falling debris, we have the dust of the tree cutting.  We are thankful that Cal-Trans is using the opportunity to protect us, and our fire fighters.

The 78 - degree water felt heavenly this AM when the 8 AM temperature was 48 degrees! 

Water Aerobics for the 19^th year, with a 2 year hiatis while the pool was being renovated, it keeps us YOUNG and active.  We are due for another hot spell or two, probably when our local children start school on the 22^nd of August.  The Valley schools started on the 1^st of August!!  What happened to the lazy, crazy days of summer?!

When we were kids summer started on Memorial Day and went through Labor Day plus one day.  Wednesday after Labor Day was always the first day of school.   Of course, I could get pretty antsy waiting for that happy day.  I loved school!!  But I didn’t dare utter the word BORED or my mom would give me a list of things I could do with my time - good helpful things like fold the laundry, play with my siblings or read to them, wash the dishes (no dishwasher machines when I was a kid!) or weed the garden.  Picking the yellow fuzzy caterpillars off the green beans was my all time least favorite thing to do!  She armed us with a coffee can, with a bit of kerosene in the  bottom, and aimed us at the green beans!  Love green beans to this day, but would never, ever plant them due to the garden pests that they attract.  Fortunately, Mr. Birdseye discovered the advantages of fast freezing and we can get our “fresh frozen” green beans without the fuss of growing them and eliminating the pests!

With the four-year drought and the resulting brown forest, thanks to the invasion of five different kinds of beetles, we will not see green hills anytime soon.  So far, the oaks and the aspens appear to be unaffected, but there is certainly not a healthy market for all of these trees that are being cut by PG&E and Cal-Trans.  The private tree cutters are busy with the trees around houses, some of which require cranes to lift out the pieces as they are cut due to the proximity of structures.  I guess we were not very good stewards of the land entrusted to us.  We should have cut some of these trees while they were small enough to cut with a bucksaw!  Mother Nature is “clear cutting!”