California’s rainy season begins in October and ends in May. During the dry season there are years where there won’t be a drop of rain for six months. Like the prevailing westerly winds off the Pacific Ocean, our weather pattern defines us.
From San Francisco it is twelve hours north to Portland, sixteen hours east to Salt Lake City, six hours south to Los Angeles. Each place is distinct, each has its own fashions, the same-same suburbs, one destination even comes with its own religion.
Phoenix in 1990 a million people by then had arrived with plans to stay. Sunbirds migrating south for winters acting like newcomer’s, the hardcore full timers holding a grudge impatient waiting for the Valley of the Sun to empty out. Phoenicians know another full timer even when they don’t. Scottsdale has a turquoise and sterling silver monied vibe, people from San Francisco coming here without the cooling fogs rolling over their pale hued skin wither and wilt. The chapped lips, the frizzy hairdos, faces beet red from too much sun. The Sonoran can be an unforgiving thorny venomous place. Welcome to the desert, now go home.
Vineyards have been planted in Wilcox, Sonoita and Cornville. Dedicated winemakers are producing world class wine.
The Hood River I knew is not the same place since windsurfing became a thing. The Dalles remains truer to form, older, a little less razzle dazzle, no supercharged go-go real estate, a storied place, sited along the Columbia, The Dalles is where you want to be from, you work up the spunk to leave, might go back, when you run out of luck.
Twin Falls is bigger but still not much changed. Sun Valley isn’t Idaho. Try Salmon, Lewiston, or Bonners Ferry if you want to find Idaho. Moscow is what I’d want Idaho to be, it is a blend of nothing the rest of Idaho wants. The Palouse is an acquired taste with a mere fraction touching Idaho, but once your palette shifts, once you understand the Palouse’s flavor, the sweep of mounds, slopes and sprawl of grass, here is a provocative serenity.
Took all of twenty years for the population of Bend, Oregon to have doubled to 100,000. Traffic on the highway back to Portland feels like its quadrupled.
I know of Steamboat Springs from stories my father told, where he grew up trout fishing and downhill skiing off Rabbit Ears Pass. Back in the day his boyhood town wasn’t even 500 people, now there are 13,000.
New Mexico’s Sierra Blanca rises 12,003 feet and is the highest southernmost alpine peak in the continental United States. Ruidoso is down at 7000 feet in the Sierra Blanca’s foothills. The Mescalero Apache nation is just south where the hard to come by headwaters of the Rio Ruidoso originate. The river flows at a rate of 900 gallons per minute. For context in Albuquerque the Rio Grande flows at a rate of 205,000 gallons per minute, and in Vancouver, Washington the Columbia flows at a rate of 76 million gallons per minute. Developers in Ruidoso hoping to expand can’t find water and without access to water there are no permits to build. Ruidoso is at or over the limit, depending on who you want to quarrel with.
Colorado Cattlemen’s Association have half a mind to lasso and brand Governor Jared Polis for having the temerity to set March 20, 2021 as “Meat Out Day.” The Governor thought he had a civic duty to promote the health benefits his constituents might enjoy if they ate a little less meat. This has set off a stampede of criticism. Cattlemen have vowed to circle the wagons. Tensions, consternation, and high blood pressure have forced the industry to draw a line in the sand no governor should dare cross. Texas longhorns are coming in, red angus are being pep talked, a shipment of Beyond Meat has been halted at the border and ordered to turn around and head right on back from where that load of counterfeit non-meat has come from.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association has published its worrisome forecast for spring. Rain and snow will be down, temperatures slightly up. La Niña deserves some blame, then there is the grinding change in our climate that is tending more to drought than flood, if it’s not one disaster it’s another. None of this is good news for nobody.
The twelve western states are bonded together by a climate that is aggravating the water supply. Access to drinking water is growing tighter here, there, and everywhere. Rural communities are feeling the pinch. Ranchers and farmers get out of bed put their boots on and work with the cards mother nature deals. To a one a rancher knows if this spring’s forecast holds up livestock will be grazing on parched rangeland. Getting the herd fat, hoping the waterholes don’t dry up, praying a heatwave doesn’t punish the headcount, having something to show for all their hard work is no certain thing.
Dairymen are in a fight for market share. Consumers are choosing almond milk more often and it’s putting pressure on dairymen. Isn’t possible to catch a break, not in this capitalism, not where the North Star disruption driven by free market fundamentalism grabs hold. States are tracking groundwater. Hay growers know what’s ahead, swelling urban populations are clamoring for access to a dwindling resource. Water rights are complex, litigation can span a decade, a tangled mess of special interests from seven western states are between now and 2025 in the process of reconsidering what to do about all the water that’s gone missing.
More citizens from Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles and Portland need to take up the cause of helping our rural communities. Traveling out to hike, fish and hunt isn’t going to buy one more book for the local library. Visitors passing through don’t see the gauntlet our rural citizens endure. Minimum wage ain’t nothing, sometimes you get paid for how many bales of hay you can buck. Sure, there are some cutting a fat hog, but plenty more are just scraping by, living on the land, each one with a fated story. I have met lonely workers stuck out there on station at some remote outpost, I know others near woebegone because they crave the solitude.
Neighbor in Oregon didn’t own land of his own. He did have a used tractor, worn out pickup truck, and a twenty-year-old John Deere combine harvester purchased at auction. He’d rent tracts other growers wouldn’t plant. Pain in the butt. Had to move his equipment from one plot to the next while his competition worked one big piece. Had a problem with a well pump that he sorted out, saved me from having to call a repairman. Broke my heart when his little girl doing chores was tossing feed to the horses when one turned and kicked, caught her in the forehead. Helicopter evacuated her to a hospital in Portland. Whether his girl would live was not certain, the blow was as awful a thing any father could ever imagine happening to his child.
This complicated big fat sloppy kiss of a world needs some tending to. Talking to people it is ordinary to learn that none are too pleased about this corner we’ve put ourselves in. Appears that this change will test our will. Painkillers won’t do, biting on a poker chip is too cruel, knowing the change is going to hurt like hell, still there’s no avoiding the fact surgery is needed, worse than pulling a tooth, more awful than taking a lung, mending will require patience and healing takes time, not every community, rural or urban will feel the same pain, but enough good citizens will pass the test, and I’m for one betting cooler heads will prevail.
Time, we get to doing what we’ve been putting off, fix this hot honey of a world, make her shine, get the love of survival gussied up, not so much for us, but for the folk who’ll be born into her, who’ll take over from where we’re going to be leaving off.
Beautiful