S2-E59: Nature Doesn't Care About Your Plans - Bears, Wildfires, & 30 Years Building Ponds

Welcome back to the deep end.

I'm Eric Triplett.

I'm your host.

And I'm very excited about sharing this experience with you.

I've been thinking a lot about this and how to assemble all of these experiences into one cohesive timeline spaced podcast to kind of just share this with you to learn from, right? Now, I've been building ponds for almost 30 years, and for most of my career, bears weren't something I thought about at all.

Rarely, if ever.

And I've built hundreds and hundreds of water features.

Bears just were never a major issue.

They weren't even on the table as a conversation.

But something has changed.

Now...

Over the last decade, most of you know that we purchased a ranch in the foothills of Southern California in this beautiful town called Cherry Valley.

And we've been living here in Cherry Valley and working up in Oak Glen and the upper levels of Yucaipa.

And bears definitely have become part of the conversation.

I've mentioned we're rebuilding a pond in Oakland that was built 30 years ago.

And it's definitely what we're calling the bear pond because the bears are there.

We're watching for bears in the morning.

There's signs of the bears.

The bears did damage to the pond and that's why we're rebuilding it.

And so today I want to talk about what I've personally seen bears do to ponds and what i've learned from repairing that damage and how it's actually changing the way i think about designing ponds in bear country i remember the first pond that i built that was uh i want to say i want to say the word attacked but i don't really want to say the word attacked i i remember the first pond that i built that was damaged by a bear And it was in upper Cala Mesa, backed up against Cherry Valley.

Ironically enough, that's where I live now.

But we built that pond in Cala Mesa.

And it went for many years without it being damaged.

And I built it roughly 25 years ago.

We fixed the pond once or twice over the years.

Welcome back to the deep end.

I'm Eric Triplett.

I'm your host.

And I'm very excited about sharing this experience with you.

I've been thinking a lot about this and how to assemble all of these experiences into one cohesive timeline spaced podcast to kind of just share this with you to learn from, right? Now, I've been building ponds for almost 30 years, and for most of my career, bears weren't something I thought about at all.

Rarely, if ever.

And I've built hundreds and hundreds of water features.

Bears just were never a major issue.

They weren't even on the table as a conversation.

But something has changed.

Now...

Over the last decade, most of you know that we purchased a ranch in the foothills of Southern California in this beautiful town called Cherry Valley.

And we've been living here in Cherry Valley and working up in Oak Glen and the upper levels of Yucaipa.

And bears definitely have become part of the conversation.

I've mentioned we're rebuilding a pond in Oakland that was built 30 years ago.

And it's definitely what we're calling the bear pond because the bears are there.

We're watching for bears in the morning.

There's signs of the bears.

The bears did damage to the pond and that's why we're rebuilding it.

And so today I want to talk about what I've personally seen bears do to ponds and what i've learned from repairing that damage and how it's actually changing the way i think about designing ponds in bear country i remember the first pond that i built that was uh i want to say i want to say the word attacked but i don't really want to say the word attacked i i remember the first pond that i built that was damaged by a bear And it was in upper Cala Mesa, backed up against Cherry Valley.

Ironically enough, that's where I live now.

But we built that pond in Cala Mesa.

And it went for many years without it being damaged.

And I built it roughly 25 years ago.

We fixed the pond once or twice over the years.