Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: Spring

  • Winter Thoughts

    As I look at the trees, I see bending from the snow loads. Some have snapped, while others have gone over at the roots. It isn’t a complex decision – I’m about to re-block and re-level the sawmill, and the stuff that is too small to make a log will make next winter’s firewood. Douglas Fir tends to roll over as the roots fail, while the tap roots of the Ponderosa Pine leave them susceptible to snapping. Western larch seems to be (at my elevation) immune to the snow loads.

    The midge spread diseases show a lot fewer whitetail deer browsing on the downed Fir trees. Last winter, if I started a chainsaw, a dozen or more deer would show up for the potential buffet. Now, many fewer deer. I suspect that the increased number of coyotes will likely also have problems by the time Spring rolls around again.

    The ponds are frozen – our next influx of waterfowl will be in the Spring – yet the decrease in feral cats has led to a great increase in the little squirrels. At the house, my aging dog is almost totally deaf. She seems to be compensating for not hearing by barking more. I’m not sure how that works out.

    As I look at the downed trees, I recall the idea that a properly thinned forest will produce the maximum timber and 80% of the grazing. My challenge is to get the cleanup and salvage moving along – not for me, but for the next generation. I have always planted fruit trees where i lived – someone will harvest the fruit, just as I have harvested the fruit from trees that landowners before me have planted.

    It is winter – but soon Spring will return, with the fawns, the ducklings and the goslings. And I will putter indoors until Spring comes north again.

  • Possibly the Nastiest Death Sentence Ever

    When I began teaching at Trinidad State, the cop instructor’s classroom was kitty-corner across from my office in the science building.  Each Spring, he would greet his class with a recitation of this sentence from Judge Kirby Benedict, in Taos, New Mexico.

    Jose Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, in a few short weeks it will be spring. The snows of winter will flee away, the ice will vanish, and the air will become soft and balmy. In short, Jose Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, the annual miracle of the years will awaken and come to pass, but you won’t be there.

    The rivulet will run its soaring course to the sea, the timid desert flowers will put forth their tender shoots, the glorious valleys of this imperial domain will blossom as the rose. Still, you won’t be here to see.

    From every treetop some wild woods songster will carol his mating song; butterflies will sport in the sunshine, the busy bee will hum happy as it pursues its accustomed vacation; the gentle breeze will tease the tassels of the wild grasses, and all nature will be glad, but you. You won’t be here to enjoy it because I command the sheriff or some other officers of the country to lead you out to some remote spot, swing you by the neck from a knotting bough of some sturdy oak, and let you hang until you are dead.

    And then, Jose Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, I further command that such officer or officers retire quickly from your dangling corpse, so that vultures may descend from the heavens upon your filthy body until nothing shall remain but bare, bleached bones of a cold-blooded, bloodthirsty, throat-cutting, murdering son of a bitch.”

    This version seems a little sanitized with politically incorrect comments removed – but it didn’t take a lot of time to find it.  It is Spring, and Terry Walker, the criminal justice instructor back in the mid-eighties and I are still here to enjoy it.