Arizona's Wallow Fire: The Ragamuffin Ranch Experience

On Sunday, May 29, with all of us present at Ragamuffin Ranch, we ate a nice breakfast, and then moved washers, dryers and refrigerators into the house, and out of the house to the cabin and the barn, in order to get each where we wanted it, since we had inherited the former owners appliances and moved down our own. After that was done, the Engineering Geek left to return the rented utility trailer to U-haul in Albuquerque, and the Cowboy-In-Training and I went to Springerville, Arizona--about 30 miles away--to do some necessary shopping.

It was a clear, cool and very windy day, with a few puffy clouds over the White Mountains. As we walked across the Safeway Parking lot, dodging wind-blown shopping carts bent on catching the cows in the pasture next door, I watched a hard-bitten character in a black cowboy hat flip a smoking cigarette onto the pavement. He started to walk away, but he must have felt my glare, for he came back and ground out the ember, and tipped his hat. "He could have started a fire!" the CIT hissed when he had passed by, and I replied: "And with this wind, he could have burned down the whole town."

We did our shopping, ate our lunch, and began the drive back across the state line into New Mexico. As the CIT drove, I was watching as a white cloud built to the southwest, over the heart of the Rim Country, and then it seemed that the wind began blowing dust from the clouds toward us. By the time I opened the gate at Ragamuffin Ranch, standing aside to let the CIT drive through, I saw a definite haze clinging to the bottom of our washes and along the ridgelines. "Smoke," I said, having closed the gate and jumped into shotgun position for the drive to Ragamuffin Ranch headquarters.

When we had got the groceries inside, the CIT went to feed the horses, and I turned on my computer. Arizona Fires website had no information yet, but New Mexico Fires had a tweet along the right banner of the page. Following the tweet, I was taken to InciWeb for the Southwest Region, and found out that a small fire had been discovered in the Bear Wallow wilderness of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest 18 miles southwest of Alpine, Arizona, which was already a reassuring 50 miles away from us. "No problem," I told the CIT before we sat down to dinner. "It's small, yet, and far away. They'll get it under control before we have to worry about it."

On Wednesday, when I left for Ragamuffin House in Tijeras, the fire was not under control, and we had seen smoke Tuesday evening, but it was still reasonably small and far away. But while I was driving, the Red Flag winds blew that fire up, and overnight that night it grew from 6,000 acres to 40,000 acres. And on Thursday evening, the smoke from the fire blanketed Albuquerque, and was so thick that people wondered if the Bosque was burning again. It was, the radio guy reassured us on the news, the Wallow fire.

I drove back to Ragamuffin Ranch on Sunday, as we watched the fire grow and grow. While I was driving back, they evacuated Alpine and Nutrioso, and dry lighting started fires in Catron County. Fire spotters were stationed along US 60, and one was on the hillside from which I took this picture, looking west through clouds of smoke and thunder toward the fire burning in Arizona. The very small shower I drove through on the Continental Divide fell with ash, making a strange gray mud on the windshield.


The fire grew by the hour and by the day. The the smoke cloud sat above the ridges on the Ragamuffin Ranch road, and it stretched from this western horizon all the way to east, a thick border of smoke dividing the sky, and headed toward the Rio Grande valley. On Monday I discovered all the best websites to get up to date news, as the fire grew into the hundreds of thousands of acres, and towns near Escudilla Mountain on the New Mexico border were evacuated.



The animals got weary of the smoke very quickly, and even the horses, who spend snowy days out under the sky, were reluctant to come out of their stalls. Here, Rafie stands peering out with a look that says it all.

By Monday evening, there were two Type 1 Incident Command Teams in charge of nearly 1000 firefighters, and no containment. We had spent the day in a fog of smoke here at the ranch that got thicker and thicker, so that working outdoors was impossible and the gloom made us turn on the lights at 3 in the afternoon. At the community meeting that night, the residents of Eager and Springerville were told to prepare for possible evacuation, and the residents of Greer were evacuated.




Tuesday, and there was optimism that the firefighters would hold the perimeter between Nelson Reservoir and Greer, and no further evacuations would be necessary. The CIT and I went to Quemado to get a few things at the little Country Store, and buy a cab for the '93 Dodge Ram that he is restoring to its former glory. While I sat over a cup of coffee at the Largo Cafe, talking to a trucker from Tennessee who was stranded for need of a new engine computer, we watched the smoke roll in once again. Then, as I was mopping up the last of my blueberry pie and ice cream, a couple came in and sat down to order. The woman was crying. I gave her a kleenex and she said, "Well, after all, I've never been kicked out town before." They were from Eager, and the southern part of that little Mountain town where I shop at the Merc and at Basha's was being evacuated. We stopped for the outhouse at the log yard on the way in, and ash covered the seat and the paper. The setting sun through the smoke gave the ranch an eerie, Mars-like ambiance.

Still, Tuesday night the meeting--which was streamed--was brave in the face of difficulty. We were told that they were working on holding the line at Eager, but that since Wednesday was predicted to be another Red Flag windy day, other residents of Springerville-Eager ought to be prepared.


Wednesday morning, as the sun rose through the ever-present smoke, we learned that the lines from Eager to Greer had held, but at the morning press briefing, the IC Commander said that another Red Flag windy day meant that it would be a hard day. It was, as the smoke thickened and the Mars landscape returned, we hoped for the best and began preparing for the worst. We had a phone meeting with the EG and with our partner, and the EG began driving down with the horse trailer so that we could move the horses. Thus we spent our 9th anniversary preparing to evacuate if it comes to that.By evening, the fire was now less than 25 miles away.

So Wednesday evening, when the CIT and I finished watching a movie, and just as the EG pulled up with the trailer, we turned on the computer and learned that all of Springerville and Eager were being evacuated. The Community Meeting was cancelled, and we began to plan, as we ate our dairy and fish meal for Shavuot, to evacuate the horses.

They left this morning, after we learned that the fire went through Greer and structures were lost, and that the New Mexico National Guard is at Luna, near the Arizona border and that the Quemado Volunteer Fire Department are in Coyote Canyon, waiting to engage the fire as it nears the state line.


And so I wait, while the EG and CIT drive the horses to the Rio Grande Valley, and I wonder. So far the lines at Eager and Escudilla Mountain, at Luna and at Coyote Creek are holding. Will they hold today? Tonight? Will Luna, under a pre-evacuation notice by the Catron County Sheriff since Monday, will Luna be spared? Will the fire enter New Mexico at Coyote Creek and Bonita? Will it trigger an evacuation for us in a few days? And the big question: Where will it end?

The smoke seems thinner now. Is that a harbinger of good news?

Baby Siete

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

While we were completing the move of our furniture down to Ragamuffin Ranch, admidst the multiple trips back and forth, Lucy the Longhorn kicked her heifer off and disappeared. On Wednesday evening the 16th, I drove down to the ranch, and on Thursday morning as I prepared to drive the truck back up with the Engineering Geek, I noticed that Lucy was not with the herd. She had been looking wide across the hips for the past weeks, and I suspected that she was off calving. The CIT called Thursday night to tell us that he had seen Lucy come to the stock tank to drink and then hurry off again. He thought she was hiding a calf. Later he called to tell us he saw her with the calf near the dirt tank, but Lucy was in no mood to let him get close--she had a little male. For the first week or so, we saw little of Lucy and less of the calf, but lately he has been gamboling along with herd, trying to graze, playing, and checking out this new world of Ragamuffin Ranch. We call him Siete, because after Chuckwagon went from steer to meat, we had six cattle, making Siete the 7th again.

Not at all camera shy, Siete looks toward me from across the fence, trying to puzzle out what this strange person is doing. Mamma Lucy was less pleased, and I used the telephoto lens.






During the mid-afternoon the cattle settle in to chew their cuds after grazing all morning and getting a drink at the nearby stock tank. Siete rests too, here under the watchful eye of his sister, the heifer Blanche (not pictured). Blanche got up and faced me, her half-Brahma features looking remarkably fierce and she stared me and the camera down.







Here, Siete is checking out something of interest to a little boy calf under the juniper, while his mama grazes on the ditch bank. Occasionally he does escape his mother's attention . . .

. . . Siete hurries to near where she is, and when she is close enough, he allows himself to be distracted by his world again.








He's the only baby now, but very soon he will be joined a few others. Freckles is positively lumbering, so great with calf is she, and LB will be calving soon after her.


Spring is coming to Ragamuffin Ranch and so are the baby calves.

Update: Why Blogging Has Been Sporadic

In getting ready to finally write a blog post that has been planned for over a week, I am thinking that my readers deserve a little insight into the reasons for sporadic blogging.

It is not that I don't want to blog, and it is not that I have nothing to say. Many great ideas have come and gone with no blog post because I had other things I did not want to do as much, but that nevertheless needed to be done.



This is the way the world works when your Engineering Geek retires and you begin to do more than plan a move to a new part of the state. When doing takes the place of planning, that alone takes a monumental investment of time and energy. But when insurance companies first extend coverage and then rescind it, because--quite frankly--they don't know what they are doing; when it takes a10 minute hold time--and thus 10 wasted minutes of cell phone time--to establish long distance service on the ranch landline--; when time gets eaten by all of those little annoyances that used to be non-existent back in the days of real customer service--something has to give. And what has given (and given!) is the time alloted to writing the blog.



Yesterday, computer technical problems required an otherwise unnecessary trip to Gallup, the closest New Mexico Radio Shack to the ranch. Today, I was scheduled to write my blog.

And then--a major snowstorm watch was issued for most of the state. So a trip into the grocery store in Springerville became a must, to stock up on fresh fruits and vegetables that would have run out in the next few days, and to get a few other items to make a snowstorm more bearable. Such as makings for hot chocolate . . .

And upon my return, the CIT and I dedicated a few hours to cutting wood. With the help of logging chains and good old Henry, the F-150, we pulled out four logs from the discard pile--too messed up to use in a house--and then the CIT took out the chainsaw and cut them into fireplace size pieces. We now have enough wood for the snow and cold temperatures that are on their way to us.



Now I am ready. I do hope we get a good snow so that I can finally write the planned blog!



In a few weeks I will be able to begin blogging more regularly again. Until then, know that I am thinking of all my blogging friends, and I am spending some time reading other blogs. It is easier to read than write after a long day of packing and hauling boxes of books. In the meantime, my planned blog for last week will go up tomorrow.



Let it snow!

In Which We Acquire a Horse and I Learn the Contemplative Art of Mucking

On Shabbat afternoon, I loaded up the CR-V, and with Umbrae riding shotgun, I headed out on the open road down to Ragamuffin Ranch. The Engineering Geek had returned to Ragamuffin House for Shabbat on Friday, and now it was my week to be at the ranch and his week to work on the house.

I had come down with a cold, and was not at all sure that I wanted to go down. But once I left the freeway and was driving down through the Malpais, and then across the high plain of the Continental Divide, I decided that all was most well. In our part of the world, the car commercials are true to life, and being the only car on the road is a frequent experience.


This week at Ragamuffin Ranch, besides the work of moving more boxes and taking care of details, I was arriving check in hand, to purchase Reeds Shiny Eyes, a five-year old registered Quarter horse, better known as Badger. (We also purchased a bull, a ranch truck complete with generator and winch, and a few other sundry items, but I am mainly here to talk about the important purchase).

Badger is a gentle, well-trained gelding. He comes when he is called, stands patiently so that the rider can open a gate without dismounting, stands when the rider dismounts to take care of a cow, and takes care of his rider. A few weeks ago, when Cowboy J.'s wife Nurse A., was mounting, the saddle slipped, and he stood through that, too. This is the kind of horse that will actually help teach the CIT to do cowboy work.

Yesterday, as part of moving out, Nurse A. has stepped out on the porch, tested the wind and checked the temperature (both mild), and decided that it was the day to muck out the entire barn and back pasture. The CIT and I decided to participate as an educational project called Learning by Doing. It has been years since I participated in mucking, and I am older now, so I came armed with an ergonomic mucking rake, a garden rake, a gravel shovel and two mucking buckets. Cowboy J. and Nurse A., however, have been housing four equines and have had little time to keep up with mucking--what with the move and all--and so it was not quite the Augean stables, but we estimated four cart-loads of muck would need to be hauled away to the compost. But the day sunny, the snowmelt was proceeding apace, and a warm breeze was blowing up from southern Arizona. And so we started to work.



Rake a mixture of hay, manure and sawdust into a pile, switch garden implements, and shovel the pile into the cart hooked up to the ATV. Muscles happy to move, and the sweet scent of humus rising in the warm air, the sunshine warm on my back. Do it again. Stop every now and again to watch a hawk rising lazily on thermals above the mesas, take a deep breath and give thanks for being alive on such a day. Rake. Shovel. Pause. Let the CIT handle heavy buckets, and every now and again, give Tommy the Ranch Dog a pat. Soon, in the drowsy warmth (nearly 60 degrees at 7500 feet, don't let the snow on the north-facing hills fool you), I caught the rhythm of the work, and that sense of pondering that accompanies certain kinds of work transformed me. And for the day, it didn't matter to me if governments were falling, oil prices rising, and mayhem ensuing: I am mucking. All other thoughts were merely passing clouds, almost unnoticed, outside of me.

My mind and body slow down every time I cross the Catron County line. People are comfortably solid here. Sales are made on a handshake, and opening an account at the propane company comes with a 40 minute conversation aimed at repairing the world country-style, by telling stories and beginning a cautious relationship that has potential far beyond the sale and delivery of propane. The manager of the propane office is a neighbor; the school-bus driver who picks the CIT up every morning over McKinley Ranch Road is also the school librarian and the owner of the local gas station and convenience store. Among the Big Men in Trucks (a la Jon Katz) who gather around the woodstove and Y and A Auto is a 90 year-old Navy Vet who can tell you the whole history of the county, and who has lived about half of it.

Ninety. Good clean living, I suppose. Out in the air and the sunshine. It is not that there isn't stress here, but when you move more slowly and stop to watch the hawk, time telescopes and stretches out. And in such space-time, it really does one well to slow down in telling one's own story, to become circumspect. There is lots of time for people to learn who you are. No need to create a rushed first impression. So I listened as the Big Men in Trucks solved the worlds problems as they drank cups of coffee and welcomed the CIT into their midst while I bought a chain saw. I was quiet while they gave the CIT a demonstration on how to use the Stihl saw. And while Nurse A. was instructing him on the finer points of grooming Badger--who loves a good brushing on the rump--I stopped and took in January sun on my face, the warm wind from the southwest, the coyotes crossing Cemetery Hill, and the hawk, stooping to catch lunch on the mesa.

Who need an afterlife? This is the life we are living right here and right now. This is G-d's country. And so, like cleaning for Pesach, mucking becomes another time for pondering, for getting into flow.