Seasons

The seasons here are impressionistic, washes of hot and cold, dabs of bright light and dusky shade, minutely etched variations of temperature from canyon to canyon. Warm blue skies and frosty mornings, shards of ice in the birdbath, boletus pushing up through the rotting oak duff. Each element blends and rubs against each other, blurs the micro-climates of the hour with the broad stroke of the calendar. Even at the height of a season no one color dominates the picture for long.

Yesterday I drove up Chew's Ridge and there were little bits of snow in the gullies at about 3000 feet. When I got to my friend's house, I was sweating in the hot sun. We sat on the edge of a steep canyon in the afternoon drinking beer and my head went drowsy, my feet ready to be planted in soil for the spring. Later, sanding finish off of rufous hardwood boards down at the Big House, the wind chimes tinkled the way they do in the regular summer heat breeze.

By the late afternoon today, sanding more decking, I had to find olive oil to rub my chapped lips. Honey bees buzzed in the pink-flowered shrubs along the driveway and the chimes rang in gentle cacophony. My hat was pulled down low over my sunglasses and I constantly adjusted my posture to avoid the full sun in my eyes. I forgot to drink water and when I went to the tap and sucked down a glass, the cold cramped my stomache.

Tonight it is cool again and the air around the trailer is oaky from the wood stove. A waxing crescent moon is bright in the sky, almost to the western horizon when I went outside last. I can hear the deer over in the draw between here and the big house. It has grassed up faster than anywhere else around and they gather there. I saw them today at mid-day, sprawled around in the plush green, the way they will do when the real heat comes.

Cachagua creek has not run yet, might not at all. When it is raining, I walk down to the bone yard by the road and listen for a current. On the little path down that way, I usually pick some artemisia, bitter wormwood sagebrush, and chew it as I walk. Past the wormwood, black sage covers the hill. When the air is wet, the smell of the sages is overwhelming on the road.

A mystery: the wild pigeons are in some kind of die off. A big one landed at the bird feeder the other day and waddled around like a drunk. Then I found a dead, unwounded one over on the road to the Big House. I mentioned this to a friend and he said that he had recently seen many dead along the Carmel River, pulled some of them out.

I have no idea if why this is happening or if it is a regular occurrence.