A View from Sierra County

Mother Earth Wishing Us a Happy Winter Solstice

The Winter Solstice is probably one of my most treasured holidays, symbolizing as it does the return of light.  We don't really start seeing the difference in day length until about the end of January here at my latitude, but it makes all the difference in my state of mind knowing the days are once again lengthening, ever so incrementally.

The weather watchers amongst you probably already have heard that Mother Nature decided to throw a big storm this year for the holidays.... record-breaking rainfalls throughout California.  Here's a few photos taken on Sunday, showing water in motion, at the cofluence of Oregon Creek and the Middle Yuba River, a few miles from me.

I am standing on the Highway 49 bridge looking upstream to take these photos, with the creek to the left in the picture and the river to the right.

As you can see, both have swollen to completely fill in their banks.  Rain has been falling on all that snow that came down a month ago, knocking out so many peoples' electricity, and the snow melt has made it look more like spring than winter storm flow!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See that little bit of bright green grass?  There's a parking lot and vault toilets behind it, but what you DON"T see is the long swath of sandy beach that is underwater!  This is one of the beaches where we often stop to swim in summer, and directly across the river is another stretch of sand, also completely submerged!

Mama Earth doing a little mopping up?  Hopefully nothing more serious, though there are lots of places in the region who have announced where you can get sand bags.  Just in case.

This year, the Winter Solstice and a Lunar Eclipse coincide, at around midnight PST or early AM tomorrow if you are further east.  Unfortunately, the clouds are not scheduled to break, so I will have to imagine the rare beauty of it! As I write, the moon will be full at 11:43 PM, PST - glorious way to bring back the light!

To all of my dear readers, may I wish you a Happy Yule on winter solstice, and a year full of light and joy to come!

Emerging Out From Under the Weather

There I was, two weeks ago... going full-tilt towards a blog recovery. Posting, taking photos, planning posts, when wham!  Severely interrupted by the weather.

Perhaps you heard news reports discussing a major storm in Northern California, bringing very low snow and temperature levels, and power outages affecting thousands.  Yep, that was us...

Since my last post, I was busy cooking for the first Annual Harvest Dinner that our non-profit hosted on November 20th.. making broth, roasting two beef roasts, baking desserts, and then all day of the event, supervising the cooking of two soups, a beef stew and a vegetarian lentil soup.  I awoke to heavy snow, which continued all day, and my cook crew worried a bit about attendance at our event, which was being hosted at the Fire Hall.  We already had bought all the food and done much of the cooking, and desserts for our pie auction were arriving throughout the afternoon, so we were delighted to sell more dinners than expected and to make a hefty profit from our pie auction!  We did most of the clean-up, stuffed the leftovers in the VFD's refrigerator, planning to return the next morning.

I went home tired, and collapsed on my couch reading the latest copy of Spin-Off, which had arrived with the day's mail... in less than an hour, the power went out and I was groping around for candles and my headlamp while DH was lighting lanterns.  We decided to spend the night in our office/guest room, right off the family room and primary heat source... the temps were dropping into the 20s and snow continued through the night and the next day.  We both had plenty to keep us busy and I got a lot of knitting done... both on the granddaughter coat and my Fairwind KAL sweather. 

We spent the next few days without power, and I abandoned my holiday pies in favor of making a berry cobbler to use up some frozen fruit.  We were planning to leave the day before Thanksgiving to visit relatives over in Santa Rosa, and while firming up plans over the plug-in phone (luckily we have always kept one of these on hand), DH's brother decided to buy us a generator for combined birthday and Christmas presents, glad to finally have a good idea of what we needed!  The weather cleared a bit on Tuesday as we went to pick up the generator, but the temps had dropped further, with lows in the low teens! 

On top of it, the power company was reporting that the low and early snows had hit trees still in leaf, causing over 250 line breaks... our problem as apparently a line break, equipment failure, AND a pole break, with no estimation available for power restoration.  The generator saved our food, and also circulated heat from our wood and propane sources... we have been careful over the years to maintain redundancy in systems here at Slate Range Camp, having multiple ways to heat and cook as well as spring-fed water and some always in storage.  We were comfortable enough, but willingly departed for two nights away for Thanksgiving.  We dined on crab with DH's parents and sis and family the night before Thanksgiving, in honor of the crab season opening on the North Coast (his is a fishing family...), then feasted on turkey  and trimmings with 20 family members on the big day.  The next morning we headed home instead of to Black Friday sales, stopping for a second dinner at youngest son's, where 20 more people dined together!

As you can well imagine, a week without power wreaked havoc on my Internet access. I could give brief updates to my FB friends and text my family, then get in the car and run a few errands to recharge my phone, but that was it!  I have spent most of this week catching up at work and on running the family business endeavors at home, but finally thought I should catch up the two or three of you who still drop by to read me!  Yes, I am still alive and doing well here in Northern California, but very grateful that the temps returned to above freezing and that the electricity has stayed on this week!