Once again we are having a challenging day here on the slopes of Mount Shasta. Check out this extraterrestrial’s eye view of the great state of California, compliments of an interactive map from Weather Underground. As you can see, we sure could use some rain to clean our dirty air. Down South, they need the rain to stop. What about the places in between, though?

Few have had it as bad lately as the folks in Paradise–Paradise California, that is. Wildfires, described July 11th as a “sleeping giant” by Yvette Streeter (the town spokeswoman), “threaten to turn the entire town into an inferno with no estimate for containment,” she said.

No estimate for containment…hmmm, sounds pretty bleak. That was Friday, though, and everybody knows what a difference a weekend can make. The July 14th update puts a better spin on the situation: People who still have homes are back; and just in case the horrendous smoke is effecting even one tiny residential brain, city managers have issued a formal directive on the Paradise web site in fiery-red bold caps: REMINDER: THERE IS NO RESIDENTIAL BURNING ALLOWED in the Town of Paradise until the end of fire season.

End of fire season? When’s that? — Whenever the rain starts, you silly goose. Usually some time in November, except California has been having a drought. (Remember the drought?) Rain would sure help right now–if there were enough moisture without lightening, that is. The fact is, a righteous three hour downpour would clean our air, and slake the thirst of all the sad flora not sucking off drip lines. Give me one, old fashioned gully-washer on the rocks, please. (Gully-washer, that’s what my Daddy from Mississippi still calls ‘em.)

In the steep terrain of the Sierras, mostly naked from past blazes, the rain is digging terrible new gullies, sending mud trenching down by the tons. Sad to say, extreme wetness has been pummeling Southern California and making giant, roving bands of debris-filled mudpies. A moving mass came within half a mile of the great Los Angeles Aqueduct–the main supplier of drinking water to the city. That doesn’t sound good. We in Nothern California have an attachment to all water in general. We don’t share our best resource only to watch it become unfit to water somebody’s lawn. When our water leaves here, it’s pristine– just ask Nestle, Crystal Geyser, Danone, Pepsi, etc… They know its worth.

Moving on to the wildlife aspect of disaster. I’ve noticed the birds aren’t waking me up lately. Where’s all the competition for morning airspace gone? it’s already creepy to look out the window and see an orange-colored sky, but this artificial quiet is just too much. If it weren’t for occasional bursts from the geese, there’d be no bird sounds at all. About twice a day, the nearby gaggle lets out a frantic, hoarse-sounding cacophony of honking, as they were frightened or confused and don’t know which way to fly…flee…fly…maybe not so silly after all.

Speaking of disoriented flying, three weeks ago, at the request of Governor Schwarzenegger, a California Coast Guard helicopter dove down into the hot smoky flames around Big Sur to rescue some of the last of the California Condors. There are only 75 left on the planet and 40 of them reside in the fire zone, or used to, that is. With skin color ranging from yellowish to a bright red, depending on a condor’s mood, these rare and endangered birds of 9-10 foot wing span only breed once every two years. Naturalists everywhere are extremely concerned for their safety.

“The fires are burning right in the core range of these birds, this is their home, this is where they know where to roost, to find food, and now their whole entire home has been turned upside down,” said Kelly Sorenson, from the Ventana Wildlife Society. “They just don’t fly at night and if a fire burns up to their location or if they’re engulfed in smoke in the middle of the night, they’d be disoriented, they wouldn’t know which way to fly,” said Sorenson.

Although the birds aren’t all accounted for, this story still has potential for a good ending. The fire has already swept through a wild area where one of the condor chicks was nesting and left its tree home intact: ”We have three mating condor pairs this year and three active nests that we are really concerned about. We don’t know if the chicks are dead or not,” said Cathy Keeran of the Ventana Wildlife Society. We did fly over the nest and we saw the area was burned but the redwood tree [containing the nest] was still standing,” Keeran added.

Let’s see, where was I before the endangered Condors? Famine, fire, pestilence, plague, flood…how about flood–the California kind that begets mudslides: Down in Southern California, the historical state-owned Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery was engulfed and many fish were asphyxiated; more specifically, “the brood stock of a strain of rainbow trout that had been nurtured since 1916. Manager Robert Wakefield surveyed the damage to his historic Eastern Sierra fish hatchery. He shook his head and said, ‘We are going to work hard to make it better, but this place will never be the same.’”

Enough bad news from the South. Back to the Mount Shasta area. We got a sprinkling of rain yesterday. Sad to say, it had the smell of putrid, wet cigars. Chris thought it was more like somebody spilled water in a giant ashtray. There was some lightning, too, but I haven’t heard of any more fires–at least not in California.

Let me recap: The air is dense and unbreathable, the birds aren’t singing, the sky is orange and we’re in the middle of a drought, but the fox still visits every night, plus there’s no flames coming our way. Check us out from Space. We’re somewhere underneath the white tendrils of smoke at the top. If you want to see our fox, email me and I’ll send you a picture (SendOutCards). Thankfully, that light in her eyes is still burning holes in the smoky nights.