Incongruity in a Cloud

I am driving up the road north of Gilroy. I muse about going to Hawaii tomorrow, leaving chilly nights and gray surroundings behind. The car is moving, yet inert and lifeless, and I accept it without thinking, detached, only peripherally aware of anything.

I have driven for miles across a dun-colored autumn landscape laced with concrete roadways that serve us with smooth cunning; we are soothed into complacent living this way. I used to ride my bike everywhere and was a more fit human being then. That was years ago, and I have changed, I often say.

Glancing up at the sky, I see slate-gray clouds mounded over the coastal range to the west and the more distant hills to the east. But look there! High over the Santa Clara valley is a rose-colored beehive-shaped cloud formation that's reflecting the setting sun, now out of sight beyond the western hills. It's gloriously incongruent, soft and formless, with shifting vapors that seem turbulently alive, energetic, free and lovely.

I can imagine there are black insects buzzing around it or that it's a whirling fat tornado of pink migratory birds, like the blackbirds that flock in their millions over marshes and tidal flats. What does it mean, I wonder. Would a wizened soothsayer glean information from such a cloud? Imagining myself to be such a crone, I try but fail to see the future, discern new wisdom. Nothing else anywhere is anything but a shade of gray; the cloud fairly shouts its existence to me.

Who else sees it? Who are all these people traveling on the highway as I travel alongside them? I always wonder and never know. In our billions, we hardly know anyone; we are faceless, sometimes even to ourselves. It's the oddest thing, the anonymity of our existence most of the time. What do they notice, those people I cannot see hunched in their cars; what stirs their hearts and sparks their thoughts? That cloud? The evening sky? Or all those headlights and engines?

The evening twilight is dimming away, the air cooling and the pink cloud now far behind me. I drive on into the night, my destination a large hotel and a warm meal. I am plunged back into the rigid world of our human construct. My mind and soul remain abstracted, extracted from the right angles and petroleum products that surround me everywhere.

Incongruity as a cloud above the highway:  The natural world will not be denied. I am better for the reminder of it all, and thank every single lucky star emerging in the night's dark veil.

Pausing For A Moment

It's Fall. We had Winter all Summer and now have Summer in Autumn. Today was one of the most beautiful days of the year, equal to any wonderful summer day of gilded childhood memory, but it's October. Shouldn't it be cool and crisp?

I can hear the ocean waves pounding all around the edges of Pacific Grove, a low rumbling continuous heart beat, a steady hum of energy.  I stop to think for a moment and realize that the waves have been rushing and foaming exactly that way since forever.  Nothing has changed about that. Except that the ocean is continually changing the shore, grain by grain of sand. So, in constancy there is change. It has been a light-on-the-heart day. I loved it.

This is my 555th post, kind of a cool number. It's hard to believe I've written that much. I guess when I reach 1,000 I'll have a party. Thank you for taking time to read my stuff.

Northern California Looks Beautiful Now

Here we go zipping through September, dipping our toes into Autumn, peering down the line to Winter.

In Monterey and Pacific Grove, summer is showing its shy face, late to the party.  Anyone who has ever been here for a year or more knows what to expect and somehow survives a very long cold spell during June, July and August.

Now, with tourist season quieting down gradually, the really pretty weather is here.  This is worth waiting for.  If you are considering visiting Northern California or the Sierra foothills, all the way up to Yosemite or Lake Tahoe, the beauty is undeniably special.  Except for lack of lush green and gushing waterfalls, colors are richer, the sky is more clear, and the night air is refreshingly cool even if its warm in the daytime.

Long-time Californians know the look of folded hills covered with pastures of dried grasses, bent and aged oaks or redwood groves standing in the crooked angles of steep ravines.  Go out with your camera early in the morning or late in the day and watch how the sun plays across the tips of those grasses and gilds their edges and tips with a beautiful light.

California's natural places are uniquely appealing, beautiful and dramatic panoramas to feast your eyes on.  Just one look at the golden rolling hills with the sun glancing off them really does something to those who love the sight.  I am immensely grateful that places are preserved simply because they are beautiful and still wild.  That is priceless.