Dave Daley - California Rancher
It is almost midnight. We have been pushing hard for 18-20 hours every day since the Bear Fire tore through our mountain cattle range on September 8th, and there is so much swirling in my head I can’t sleep anyway. The fire destroyed our cattle range, our cattle, and even worse our family legacy. Someone asked my daughter if I had lost our family home. She told them “No, that would be replaceable. This is not!” I would gladly sleep in my truck for the rest of my life to have our mountains back.
I am enveloped by overwhelming sadness and grief, and then anger. I’m angry at everyone, and no one. Grieving for things lost that will never be the same. I wake myself weeping almost soundlessly. And, it is hard to stop.
I cry for the forest, the trees and streams, and the horrible deaths suffered by the wildlife and our cattle. The suffering was unimaginable. When you find groups of cows and their baby calves tumbled in a ravine trying to escape, burned almost beyond recognition, you try not to wretch. You only pray death was swift. A fawn and small calf side by side as if hoping to protect one another. Worse, in searing memory, cows with their hooves, udder and even legs burned off who had to be euthanized. A doe laying in the ashes with three fawns, not all hers I bet. And you are glad they can stand and move, even with a limp, because you really cannot imagine any more death today. Euthanasia is not pleasant, but sometimes it’s the only option. But you don’t want more suffering. How many horrible choices have faced us in the past three days?
We have taken cattle to the Plumas National Forest since before it was designated such. It is a steep and vast land of predominantly mixed conifers and a few stringer meadows on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains straddling Butte and Plumas Counties. My Great, Great Grandfather started moving cattle to the high country sometime after he arrived in 1852 to the Oroville area looking for gold. The earliest family diary of driving cattle to our range in the mountains dates back to 1882. Poor Irish immigrants trying to scratch a living from the land.
...For those of you who have never seen this land, this isn’t riding a horse into a meadow or open ridge where you can see cattle. This is literally “hunting” through a vast forest of deep canyons, rivers and creeks, and the high ridges in between. It is not an easy place to gather or even find cattle in the best conditions.
There are six generations who have loved that land, and my new granddaughter, Juni, is the seventh. And I find myself overcome with emotion as I think of the things she will never see, but only hear in stories told to her by Grandad. We all love the mountains. They are part of us and we are part of them. All destroyed. In one day. I am angry.
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