Sniff

[rejectomorph]

There was actual sky today, sort of blue-gray, with faintly discernible clouds. It's still hazy near the ground,and visibility to the north was limited. The air smells less like smoke and more like an abandoned dump from the days before sanitary landfills— or like an old campfire pit, long disused. Most likely the smoke will return tonight when the breeze veers around and blows this way across the fire. The fire is still sitting there in the same area across the river. Click on the Paradise-Magalia Branch map on this page to see how close the fire is to the town (the nearest blazing point is about a mile and half east-northeast of my house.) The jasmine will be quite gone by the time this is over. Such a pathetic June. The Sierra Nevada has become the Sierra Humo.



Sunday Verse

On Rereading a Passage From John Muir

by Yvor Winters


Seeking in vain to find the heroic brow,
The subject fitting for a native ode,
I turn from thinking, for there haunts me now
A wrinkled figure on a dusty road:
Climbing from road to path, from path to rock,
From rock to live oak, thence to mountain bay,
Through unmoved twilight, where the rifle's shock
Was half absorbed by leaves and drawn away,
Through mountain lilac, where the brown deer lay.

This was my childhood's revery: to be
Not one who seeks in nature his release
But one forever by the dripping tree,
Paradisaic in his pristine peace.
I might have been this man: a knowing eye
Moving on leaf and bark, a quiet gauge
Of growing timber and of climbing fly,
A quiet hand to fix them on the page—
A gentle figure from a simpler age.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

are rag dump and flea staging towns?!

[rejectomorph]

"Staging" on the fire maps refers to locations where fire fighting equipment and personnel are marshaled— staging areas. Rag Dump was an old mining camp and mill town. Flea Staging is near Flea Valley, another old mining camp.

A lot of the mining camps had colorful names. Magalia, now a fairly populous (though unincorporated) place was originally a mining camp called Dogtown. The increasingly posh and pricey Placerville, now an outlying suburb of Sacramento, was first called Dry Diggings and then, after a few lynching incidents, became known for most of the gold rush era as Hangtown.

Some oddly named camps are still known by their original names. We still have Whiskey Bar and Whiskey Flat, for example, as well as You Bet, Helltown, Roaring Camp and Angel's Camp. A camp called Rough and Ready briefly declared itself an independent republic in order to escape California's mining regulations, until bartenders in surrounding camps decided to quit selling liquor to "foreigners" to show them the error of their ways.

My personal favorite, though, remains Humbug, in the far northern part of the state, not far from Frogtown and Happy Camp. A close second would be Skidoo, a ghost town in Death Valley which dates from an early 20th century gold rush.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

what wonderful names! thank you for the rundown. that was fun to read. :)

rag dump

[(Anonymous)]

Ragdump has been alot of things over the years but was never an old mining camp,in the late 1800's it was a sawmill called The defiance mill fron the steam engine that powered the mill it was then an over night stop for frieght wagons hauling supplies into the feather river canyon when they where building the railroad,a fire crew was stationed there in the 1920's and 30's it was a CCC camp in the 40's a forest service camp ground and now my home

Flea Valley

[(Anonymous)]

Flea Valley was a stage stop with a hotel near the fire staging area then later a corral to herd up the cattle that roamed the range

Humbug

[(Anonymous)]

North East of the "Camp" fire is Humbug Valley and the main road out of Paradise Skyway,turns into Humbug Road and goes over Humbug Summit