Rivers, Seasons, Thankies

The dam removal blog has been gorgeously informative lately, explaining what Barnard Construction is doing, with photos from angles not shown on the fixed webcams. It includes a link to John Gussman's film clip of the explosion set off on the east corner of the dam face. Thankyous to the Park's information office, for the dam cams and the continuing flow of information.

The upper dam will continue not to have an accessible view point, even after snow melts from the Whiskey Bend Road. Good thing I went and looked from the east buttress before they began. A visual barrier has been erected just there, major fines will be levied for trespassing if you try to look. Once winter is over and the road to Whiskey Bend trailhead reopened, a tour company will be contracted to bring people to some safe spot nearby from which they will be able to see...

I sent someone a link to Tom Waits' "You Can Never Hold Back Spring", been singing it to myself ever since. Thank you, Mr. Waits, for inducing smiles since 2005, when you first gave away the song on the Web.

One of the whales down in lagoons of Baja right now is a true Wanderer, a whale named Varvara who belongs to the nearly extinct Western Gray whale population whose home waters are off Sakhalin Island. She will presumably not be one of the whales I don't see when I start going out to First Beach every week to fail to see the migration passing...