Someone has been breaking into my house and putting so, so, so many clips of raccoons on my computer. Also downloading too many photos and many of the same ones over and over as if they don’t understand how an iPhone works.
Last weekend the plan was to go to the Native American Art Market in Santa Fe, NM with my cousins for a girls weekend. My niece was a model in a fashion show and it was going to be a weekend of fun and getting away.
BUT, life intervened and there were some elders with health situations and everyone cancelled at the last minute and went to Orleans instead.
I am oversimplifying but this isn’t the place for the whole story.
This is the Klamath River at Tashawnik. There was a big fire upriver called the McKinney Fire that killed three people and vaporized a huge swathe of gorgeous scenery not to mention many homes. This is different than the Slater Fire from the 2020 fire season that killed two people and also vaporized a huge swathe of different gorgeous scenery and many homes in Karuk territory. I didn’t get to see the damage from that until June of this year.
I don’t know how to articulate what it’s like to see the damage from wildfires like that other than to say it’s hard not to cry and it’s really awful.
Back to the photo above, there was a huge rain storm and debris went into the river — I think below Happy Camp. The river looks like chocolate milk. Also a bunch of fish died.
Getting back to the Orleans trip, we had time with Mom and time with the health-impaired elders who are hanging in there like champs.
This is an elk track from Tashanik — a big one.
I got the news that the trip was cancelled while I was en route to the airport so I arrived in Orleans with my Santa Fe ‘let’s go out on the town clothes.’ I wore the same shorts (borrowed from my sister) for most of the trip. It was much hotter in Orleans than forecast for NM.
We worked around the place. Here is a giant bear pile kindly left right under Mom’s window, in the garden and on the hose to make sure we didn’t miss it. We ate lots of zucchini and cucumbers. Went on some nice walks. I read a lot. We managed to wring a decent weekend out of some not great circumstances.
