Coyote Mornings

It was a summer filled with coyotes.  Walking the low hills early, I would see them pretty regularly, usually in groups of four or five, though sometimes in pairs or alone.  Given the amount of fur-laced shit on the trails, it was pretty clear that the coyote population was healthy and strong.  One day I saw something I had never seen before.  Coming over a rise, I was startled by a huge racket.  It sounded like someone was driving a golf cart through the brush.  Instead, it was a group of four hard-charging coyotes, running right through the densest thicket of brush imaginable. It was so thick that they kept losing their footing as they jumped from bush to bush.  I always thought coyotes were stealthy, but these four were doing their best to let every living thing in the area know that they were on a hunting rampage.  Then I saw some movement on the ridge above, and there he was.  A smaller, presumably faster member of the pack, running the ridge, ten feet ahead of the birddoggers, waiting for some unsuspecting rabbit or squirrel to run out in front of the approaching phalanx in the thicket.  Didn’t seem to work this time -- I didn’t see anything run out -- but the strategy was solid.   A week later I saw another unusual thing.  I was standing at the cabana that looks out over Sweetwater Reservoir when I saw some movement down near the shore.


















Looking through the binoculars, I saw that it was a whole pack or family of coyotes -- playing in the water.  I watched for a while.  I think they might have been half heartedly fishing, as some of the larger coyotes would sometimes splash the water with great purpose.  After a while, though, they were all thrashing about, running around like little kids in a splash pool.  At one point, one of the jokesters pulled something out of the water and ran off, as if he had some great prize.  I thought it was a fish or a crayfish or something, and apparently so did his buddies because they chased him down the beach in full sprint.  It turned out that it was some long, wet piece of cloth, maybe part of a jacket or a scarf.  Still, they all wanted it.  Six of the eight coyotes engaged in a great game of tug of war, while two juveniles watched from a distance.  They pulled with great ferocity for maybe 30 seconds, until all at once everyone lost interest and dropped the cloth onto the sand.  The whole group then walked along the beach to the west, back toward the cover of the hills.  I went back to the same spot the other day -- looked down toward the reservoir and saw the cloth sitting in the same spot on the beach.

Fire Three

Here is the kicker to this story.  After fires knocked out camping in Laguna and hiking in Idyllwild, I thought I’d better stay a little closer to home.  Yesterday afternoon I decided I would head out and hike some of the trails around Sweetwater Reservoir (see Exploring below).  The kids were all occupied, so I thought I’d hightail it out to the Reservoir Overlook, which has been my go-to hike all summer.  As soon as I cleared the last row of houses blocking the hills, I stopped the car short and looked up. What in the what the??  Big plumes of smoke, all emanating from the exact spot where I planned to hike.  Not just the general area... the exact path along the exact ridge line.  By the time I got up to the park, there were 50 people gathered around, sitting on fences, taking pictures, talking on phones, all watching the ridge go up in smoke.  I was stunned -- because, yeah, it seemed like these fires were following me.  Eventually, it became a community event, and everyone would cheer every time one of the big CDF planes would drop the orange retardant on the fire. As near as I could tell, the fire moved quickly west to east, pushed gently by the ocean breeze (if it were a Santa Ana, it would move a lot faster the other direction).  It took about 45 minutes to contain the whole thing (15 acres, as it turns out), but I was worried that it had ruined my favorite trail in the area.  Here are some photos.

Today I went on a fire recon hike and was surprised to find nobody out there at all.  I expected the area might be cordoned off for fire investigation or something.  Nope -- just a guy and his binoculars making his way through the ash (me).  The path wasn’t ruined -- the part closest to the park was scorched, but the fire didn’t get down into the canyons or deep into the valley.  It looks like one big black ridge.  Walking through the blackened ground was pretty eerie, though, because the smell was thick with burn and the heat was still coming from the ground.  I stopped at the silver barn and talked to an old guy.  We swapped stories about fires, including the big one in 2007 which sent our whole neighborhood packing.  I certainly hope there is no Fire Four entry to write here.  

Fire Two

The next fire coincidence came a week later.  The plan was this:  the whole fam would drive to Idyllwild, go for an extended hike, then make our way down the mountain and bask in the oven-like luxury of Palm Springs for a few days.  The hike I selected was Taquitz Peak -- always a favorite and something the whole family could appreciate, even in the rising heat.  When I used to ramble further in the summer, I would make it to Taquitz once a summer.  I'd climb up on the lookout tower at the top and take in the 360 of Southern California -- and still make it home before dinner.  A number of times I had to beat it out of there in a hurry in advance of threatening thunderstorms.  Once, a few years ago, I was shocked to find a person manning the tower.  His name was Nate ... or maybe Nick... and he was trained at the nearby ranger station to use the available equipment to search for potential fires.  We talked a bit, and it turns out that like me he had read the accounts of Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen when they all worked as fire lookouts in the Pacific Northwest in the 1950s.  He was staying for three days and had a journal open to a poem he was working on.

Here's where the fire comes in:  the day before we left for Idyllwild, I was checking my latest obsession, the HPWREN cameras, mostly scouting for thunderstorm activity.  I was actually hoping to find some t-storm activity, because nothing gets me fired up like a good summer thunderstorm.  Didn't see any.  But as I was scrolling through the photos, I came across a camera set at Toro Peak facing north.  And I saw a small column of billowing smoke.  What the?  From my internet search I come to find that there is a "small fire" burning near Mountain Center, at the junction of Highway 74 and State Route 243.  The road to Idyllwild.  For the rest of the night I monitor the situation, and not surprisingly the fire keeps getting bigger and bigger.  The next day we head out on our trip, with the fire growing by the hour.  We've already abandon the idea of going to Idyllwild -- and we even debated Palm Springs for a while.  We ultimately decided we'd be safe down on the desert floor, but we did get some very dramatic views of the fire burning just to the south of Taquitz Peak (see below).  We also had to contend with a lot of drifting smoke in Palm Springs (also see below).  The Mountain Fire ended up burning over 27,000 acres, including one of my favorite hikes up to the desert divide (Spitler Peak).  Luckily the awesome hikes out of Humber Park were spared.  Two vacations altered by fire in ten days.  What's next?

Fire One

Coincidentally and freakishly, my plans have been undone by fire during the summer on three different occasions.  Freakish coincidence #1:  On July 6, the Chariot fire broke out at the northern end of the Laguna mountains, burning 7000 acres, destroying 149 structures at the Shriner’s camp, and forcing the closure of the Laguna Campground, where we had reservations for Monday & Tuesday.  I made the reservations early this year because I really wanted one of our favorite sites, 13 or 14, right up against the meadow.  It looks like this:

So on Saturday, while driving my son to a birthday party in Lakeside, I saw a little wisp of smoke out to the east, north of Cuyamaca Peak.  “Does that look like a fire?” I said to Billy.  “Nah … just a funny cloud,” he said.  After I got home I started googling at looking at the HPWREN cameras at Mt. Laguna.  By the next day the fire was up to 4000 acres, Sunrise Highway was closed, and it was pretty clear that no camping was going to be happening for a while up there.  On Sunday night, It looked like the fire was settling down, but then on Monday afternoon the winds shifted and the whole thing came up the ridge, tore across the Pacific Crest Trail, crossed over Sunrise, and burned the Shriner camp.  At the time, I was glued to the HPWREN Camera website, which shows photographs from dozens of backcountry locations taken and updated every 30 seconds or so.  Watching the fire pass by the peak where the camera is stationed was crazy and surreal, real life drama slowed down to still life photographs.  Tiny little fireman in the foreground, watching helplessly as the firestorm comes over the ridge.  A guy on the news said, “It looks like we may have lost the Laguna Campground,” but it turns out he was wrong on that, as the firefighters redirected the blaze before it got that far south.  Thanks goodness -- Laguna is the best campground in San Diego county. Photo taken from HPWREN website:

Exploring

In summers past, I've explored all over Southern California, from the Cuyamacas to the Lagunas to San Jacinto.  I've gotten up at 4 in the morning and driven for two hours to follow the Pacific Crest Trail into some little stretch of rugged terrain that looks particularly removed and remote on the map.  This year, though, my exploring has been close to home -- mostly in and around the rocky slopes of Mother Miguel Mountain and the rolling barren hills that surround Sweetwater Reservoir.  All are walking distance from my house.

Early in the morning, while the kids are still asleep, I take one of the paths leading from the ballfields -- up to the Rock House at the peak of Mother Miguel... or down into the valley then up the ridge that overlooks the reservoir ... or down to the golf course and up around the backside of the ridge. The best part of these early morning hikes is that I have the freedom to explore.  These are trails that don't get a lot of traffic, so there isn't any kind of trail map to consult.  They are kept up by hikers, bikers, and coyotes.  This summer I've had the time to investigate how the various paths connect, and create some interesting and original loop hikes in the process.  This kind of freedom, I have found, adds a great deal to the experience for me.  My tendency in hiking is to take the same trail over and over again -- safe, predictable, easy.  Carving out new routes, while still staying on established trails, allows me to summon up the tiniest little hint of pioneering spirit.  A few weeks ago, after a loop hike out to the reservoir, I met an older guy named Al as I was making my way by the power lines.  After talking for a few minutes, I was able to give him directions on how to make his way back around the rolling hills to the park.  I was pleased I could help, and as I walked away I was reminded of Nick Carraway from the first chapter of Gatsby.  After giving a stranger directions to West Egg, Nick suddenly feels like an explorer, a pathfinder, which informs his outlook for the rest of the exciting/unfortunate summer.  Even if I don't have the time or energy to follow a certain path up a blocky ridge line, I'll go home and immediately follow it on Google Earth, and consider it for the next day.  Not exactly Thoreau's idea of surveying, but oh well.  The low hills of San Miguel are a long way from Concord, but an early morning walk is still "a blessing for the whole day."

Summer

Blogging makes a good deal of sense for me because it immediately satisfies both my desire to write and my desire to keep track of things.  Things like birds and hikes and bugs and epic thunderheads to the east.  I've resisted it, though, out of a kind of grim faithfulness to reality:  I know that once the school year starts and my teaching responsibilities start taking the form of epic thunderheads themselves, I will promptly leave my little red blog in the dustbin of forgotten projects.  What has allowed me to begin here this afternoon, with enthusiasm and tentative confidence, is the simple idea that this should be a summer blog, an extended conversation that gets picked up and dusted off toward the end of June every year.  If it is dormant from September to June, so be it.  Perhaps that will keep it sharp and beautiful, like the sunrise I saw reflected in Sweetwater Reservoir during this morning's climb up Sweetwater summit.