Restoration

The plan for this stand is to remove the conifer trees that have encroached on the sage-steppe community in the time since European settlement.  Cut, lop, and leave.  Sort of like this.

Faux-lux Cabins

There is a place I know.  Developing.  Filling in with faux-lux cabins.  Plastic siding.  Half a million each.  Probably more.  A million.  In a place that was clear cut.  High graded.  Owner slicked it off before selling half-acre lots to people with more money than sense.  Before that it was intact forest.  Old growth really.  Not that it matters.  But I just hope they know.  Better not be wagging their fingers at roughnecks.  Loggers.  Contractors.  Look around.  You have your faux-lux cabin in a clear cut.  Oh, sure, there are trees.  The trash trees.  The trees they wouldn't take at the mill.  The big trees?  The magnificent trees?  The trees that live 400 years?  They are gone.  What is left is trash.  And plastic.

Shrooming

With all the rain on the plateau, it is suddenly mushroom season.  This one, which I take to be some variety of Amanita muscaria, was the most colorful fungus we saw yesterday.  The mushroom is moderately toxic, but has also been used in some cultures for its psychoactive effects.  I don't believe I ingested any, but every time I turned around I was being followed by someone in blue carrying a broken, yellow, plastic, whiffle-ball bat through the woods.  Seems like you had a bad trip, bro.

Storms

June was the month of the drought.  August, so far, has been the month of the storm.  (July was the month of the hospital.)  Usually the storms are isolated:  If you're not directly under them, they don't exist.  But, for the past few days, the storms have been very large.  They fill the entire sky.  They are beautiful.  They have broken the drought.