Room With A View

I am not fixated on ground squirrels, truly.  It's just that they are in my line of sight (anywhere I look, actually).  Yesterday this fellow came in through the hole dug under the wall, laboriously climbed up the rubbing boards like a ladder, and perched himself on the ledge for a view with a different perspective.  Maybe it was one of Doug's family, waiting for his return.

Tree Guy pulled into the drive in the afternoon, saying he wanted to look at the fires.  That was a bit alarming, to say the least.  From my place on the top of the hill, I've got a 360-degree view  and he lives down in the cut.  TG's day job is as a professional wildfire fighter.  He had just come back from fires down in Modoc, and his sons are working fires up in Plumas County.  A huge fire, thousands of acres, has been burning for a week over in Foresthill, smoke filling the valley, and a much smaller fire started in Diamond Springs yesterday.  We could see both sites.  It was educational to listen to TG as he described what was happening in each place, based on the smoke color and shape.  When black smoke rose in the Diamond Springs area, he knew there were houses involved.  (I learned today that one was an historic family home.)  It was eerie to watch the smoke take on a mushroom formation like an atomic bomb over Foresthill.  TG said that if the smoke cloud rose high enough, it would create its own weather with possible dry lightning and/or rain.  As a thirty-year veteran in the job, he certainly spoke with knowledge.  Fires are always a concern here, but TG says I've got enough of the property cleared as to be relatively safe.

Perhaps the little ground squirrel was on fire watch, my own warden.