Letter from the Rim

Thank you to Vince Goble for providing us with this vivid dispatch from his Uncle Rod regarding the Rim Fire (which is now 32% contained) engulfing areas near Yosemite National Park.

The ladies have flown back to Wisconsin today . This rim fire shit is affecting people we know... Hanna has a friend who's dad has a cattle ranch up by Groveland ... He's telling her they have lost about 100 head of cattle, most of them by way of fire, some just run through fences in a stampede fashion !! pretty sad...We also are hearing reports of old growth forest burning like matches in parts of west Hetch Hetchy .
       East Sonora is on evacuation alert as of 4:oo pm. Some of our friends are starting to pack their valuables now!! Jerry's dad is on alert as well so he might be staying at our house...thank God they don't have any pets.
      Berit was sent some live footage from a client's husband who flies for Cal fire as a survey pilot and he's never seen a fire this bad in his 32 years of service. The footage is scary to watch Don ,the flames are shooting up the mountains with such force there's no way man can even get near them!! Reports of people's horses not being able to out run some of the flames are burning to death while trying escape .It's fucking insane!!!!  Our good friend Robert who also flies for the district has been texting Danika & Jerry saying the media is only being told about half the truth about the severity of this fire , cause they don't they want to create a panic to the public.
       I look out over Sonora High school and see this giant nuclear smoke cloud hovering over the sierras unlike anything I've ever witnessed .The fire burns so hot and fast the moisture from the vegetation is blown into the air forming its own type of thunder storms causing lighting and acidic rain making it even more dangerous for the fire fighters on the ground to do their job , so they have to evacuate their positions allowing the fire to rage on ...while the storm induced lighting starts more fires in its path! It is the perfect fire storm .
     We should be safe in our area so don't worry about us .  I'll keep you posted cause things change fast....rod

8/22/13 satellite image of the Rim Fire from NASA Earth Observatory:

And some aerial footage:

Goran Ehlme's Walrus Photograph

Taken off northeast Greenland, the picture of a walrus feeding on clams wins Goran Ehlme of Sweden the prize of Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2006.

On the topic of Shell, how about some reparations to those Eucardorians whose lives that corporation has destoryed in the Amazon?

Bodega Land Trust - Rediscover the Wild

By Vince Goble

Science and technology, although smart, are not necessarily healthy for the relationship between humans and the planet. Look around; your comfortable home, your smart pocket device, your speedy car are all convenient for the lifestyle that you live. But where is life taking you, or rather, where are you taking life? Hmm, "taking life;" does life take? Or is life shared? Are we symbiotic expressions of stardust and space; light and dark; particles and waves; rain clouds and oceans? Do we arrive from the dark and nurturing womb; through the female opus; and into the light of consciousness to tear through space like a phallus?

Surrounded by sci-fi and weapons masses we observe vicariously the distant expressions of our collective energy. As nation members we are committed to moon walks and exchanges of torture for security; whether we agree to or not. We, all, are compliant, as members of the monetary tax base, in the system of mass extraction and production. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are the American Testaments to our own governance and philosophy; religion. Those documents were written before the industrial revolution, at a time of slavery and genocide. We have pushed those foundational pillars abroad and into our culture of imprisonment as our machinery has become more efficient at scarring the Earth and supporting our hoards in the cities.

Few, now take the time to ponder their place in the human experience on Earth. Where do we begin to consider the predicament of humans and the planet? Many simplify this fundamental question by having blind faiths. Beliefs in God, physics, money, Jesus, Allah, fate, jobs, mates, space travel, aliens, TV, information, secular law, distract us from nature and its offerings. Nature are the rocks and the water; the plants and the animals. Nature is night and day; heat and relaxation. These movements grow and change and metamorphize spontaneously and freely; without inhibition, but intuition. The time is now to embrace these elements of the planet in a different way. Let us discontinue our relentless desire to control nature. Stop bottling it for monetization. No more modules ad infinitum. To quantize life is to be dillusional; it strips us of soul and its creativity. Allow life and there will be breath. Play Go

http://www.bodeganet.com/landtrust/

"It's not pixar, it's my backyard."

By Vince Goble

Sometimes we drill the Earth in search of a wellspring and we find a pocket of geothermal activity. This geyser in Nevada's Black Rock Desert is such.

http://www.thecircumference.org/fly-geyser

Pacific Ocean as seen from Jenner, CA

One of the many beautiful beaches in Northern California is located just north of Jenner, where the mouth of the Russian River spits out into the Pacific Ocean.  Here's some footage I took from Highway One.

Seals eating a salmon: