Errant Masks.1
Another new series, dedicated to finding art even in masks which can no longer protect their original owners or any other humans…
The Habit of Gratitude
A thing I’ve come to appreciate enormously about our culture here in Sonoma County is the tendency to gratitude for our blessings, gratitude for all those whose work helps us, gratitude as an approach to life that helps us all remain healthy and live together in greater harmony. It’s a thing amply demonstrated every time another blasted fire rampages through our hills and reaches our streets. It’s a thing people have also found time to demonstrate related to covid, as you’ll note if you read carefully the photo with multiple signs, below. Happy day on which we Americans are meant to appreciate our many blessings, which include, one must acknowledge, gaining control of a large and fruitful continent-sized territory to the great detriment of that territory’s prior human occupants, who descendants still live among and around us, often ignored by the general culture at large and certainly dismissed far too readily in the “histories” we tell ourselves. Peace, health, gratitude and opportunity.
And since I’m still working through a backlog of photos from recent months, while getting out for hikes and rides often enough that I’m amassing more photos of this beautiful world at a faster pace than my own posting speed…plus, since here in the US it’s the holiday we dedicate to eating LOTS and LOTS of food (tribute to that bountiful stolen continent I mentioned above?), I’m going ahead and posting some of my food photos to get your appetite juices flowing. Gratitude for the chance to break bread with friends, and a hope that more of our human family will experience the same opportunity in peace and good health: a fitting aspiration for today.
County Views: Turkey Special
For my readers not familiar with the American customs of thanksgiving: most families eat a whole turkey that day. Yes, it’s conspicuous consumption, and yes, the turkeys have been specially bred over generations to be quite different and have more “light meat” than these turkeys likely would, if a mountain lion ever noticed the local buffet available to it if it just settled in for some good hunting. 🙂 Me, I’m vegetarian so it’s nothing to me either way. Still: enjoy, those of you to whom the turkey makes the holiday. And if your bandwidth is sufficient, you can tell me how many you count as this large group moves past:
Beauty and the Burn.2
I’ve been showing you the view of the Mayacamas ridge as seen from ground level in our valley. Saturday we went for a hike on a few of the trails that have now reopened in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park. Driving up to the entrance, along a lovely narrow canyon road that I’d not visited since before the Tubbs fire first burned this area three years ago, it was hard not cry realizing how much damage the area has sustained. Our walk went for some time right along the fire line where they’d clearly managed to hold it. You can see see that fact in the photo of the tree with a burned trunk, surrounded by green: it must have been a small hotspot just on the southern edge of the fire line, with the rest of the fire barely maintained to the north at that particular spot. You can see more such fireline photos in another post from another park and yet a third recent fire in this post from three years ago: https://somuchworldsolittletime.com/2017/11/13/walking-the-fire-line-in-annadel/
I’ll post more of these in coming weeks, now that fire danger is again low for the moment thanks to just barely enough rain, and colder temperatures. As you’ll note, I’ve decided to just give them their own name as a series…a sub-genre of county views, I guess, albeit a sad sign-of-the-times sub-genre. Stay safe and healthy in this week which for the US is normally a celebratory holiday week. Love to my friends and family here and around the world.
County Views: Beauty & The Burn
So we’re getting a bit more rain yesterday & today: Santa Rosa itself may reach the magic inch of rainfall before today is out. Thus, I’ve decided it may be safe for me to post these remaining photos I took in the days and weeks after the Glass Fire exploded into Santa Rosa over the Mayacamas Mountains. (Safe, in the sense that it’s less likely yet another fire will explode over the mountains. Though one really never knows, these days…) Somewhere in each of these photos you can see the burned ridges and eastern slopes of the range that separates us from Napa county, the view I see from my home, from my bike rides and hikes around most of this central part of the county. Most of it’s what I called twiced-burned, in a post not long ago.
I’ve recently been on many a hike, alone or with friends, where I know how to detect the marks from the Nuns and Tubbs fires three years ago. Things can grow back, so long as there’s time and enough rain to regrow. This landscape and ecosystem evolved with fire, but it did that evolving before our human pollution started tipping the balance and changing the atmosphere so very much. I wonder how much of this beauty our current childrens’ great-grandchildren will be able to see still. I wonder how many of our fellow citizens actually even care to ask themselves these questions and consider changing their habits and patterns to help preserve more for our future generations.
Beginning of the End
We’re told the fire season officially ends when one inch of rain has fallen. I haven’t determined if this is one inch from a single storm, or a cumulative inch. Either way: even if we love the clear weather in this year of covid so that it’s easier to get out for walks, hikes, bike-rides, tennis or what have you…most of us have eagerly watched the skies for the kinds of clouds that, here in northern California in the late dry season, might drop real rain.
I’ve consciously put myself out of doors with no easy recourse to dryness on the days when brief, scant showers were possible: a week ago I biked seven miles away for lunch with friends, taking only my waterproof windbreaker, and indeed a few raindrops fell on my head and my bike: but not measurable rainfall, yet… Two days later, I went for a half-day hike without even the windbreaker, and was rewarded with more scattered showers that even turned to sleet! (You can see said sleet on my sleeve, and on the ground, if you look closely enough in the photos below. And yes, it’s pathetic that we’re driven to excitement over a few raindrops. We know this. Humor us.) Yesterday our good intentions were rewarded, with about .33 of an inch here in Santa Rosa. Closer to the coast, whence comes this moisture, they were blessed with that magic inch or so of rain. Still: even 1/3 of an inch is such better news than, say, another evacuation warning or more 24-hour-news-cycle stories about, say, vote recounts. So, with apologies to true wetlanders for whom the sight of raindrops beading on plants is nothing special, here’s my paean to the beginning of the end of…well, at least this particular fire season, and maybe a few other things that have been troubling our local community in recent years.
And for those with the bandwidth, the bonus video director’s cut version of “it rained in California yesterday!” 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 