Sit Up and Take Notice, It's Fall

In spite of my best effort to hang onto Summer, I do believe Fall is leaping into action, kicking summer around, dragging it off to the trash heap.  There it goes, thrashing the tree branches around, scaring up the leaves and sending them all in a dither to gutters and windbreaks.

I thought at first that I move more quickly in fall than I do in Summer because it's nippier, but now I think it's because the time between sunup and sundown is shorter.  You have to cram your daylight errands and chores into a shorter time span than you did in June when the summer solstice added all sorts of languid feelings of ineffable contentment to your mindset.  What?  Hurry?  We've got all day long! Come sit here on the swing and have a nice cold one with me.  You and Billy Holliday sing "Summmertiiiiiime, and the livin' is easeeeeeeeeee...." and a golden filtered light looks like amber has coated everything.

But, in Fall, it's looking brisk and edgy out there, more like a Catholic nun whacking her palm with her yard stick.  "Get going, youngster.  None of that lazy nonsense in MY season.  Time to get down to business."  Whack, whack.  She is not looking furious just yet, but the lollygagging is over for the year.

I bought a bag of apples, turned my back once and for all on stone fruit, and I'm eyeing the winter squashes in the store.  It's a start anyway.  Spring is way over on the opposite side of the year, frolicking in Australia about now, or in South Africa, in her pale green sprouts and light fragrant scents made of crocuses and jonquils.

That ol' nun Fall is a stern headmistress, but she knows how to get ready for Winter, so it's time to pay attention and sit up straight.  It's high time.

Small Kittens Playing In Summer

I woke up feeling rested today, optimistic, and my mood was matched by the sunlight beaming into the bedroom.  Sunlight, which is different than foglight because it includes warmth and throws shadows, filled all the corners of the room.  I thought of the summer mornings when I was small, how the sunlight looked in the cool of the morning before the heat rose, sunny heat that flattened our cats into torpid mats of warm fur, slowly breathing as they dreamed.

We had a few raggedy cats that were fed Friskies Cat Food from cans and caught gophers on our property.  Buzzy was a big gray and white male who strolled his territory like a Mafia don.  He had some rakish scars on his nose and a few nicks in his ears and a surprisingly high weak voice.  He was burly and handsome and roamed far from our house into the neighborhood.  It became evident that our neighbors were taking better care of him then we were.  He'd come back to our yard brushed and fluffed, grateful for pleasantries and snacks when we provided them.  He was a scrapper and ran off other cats, demanded respect from them.  "Buzzy's in a fight!" we'd yell and run to witness a sound thumping by our hero tomcat.  Dust would fly and a few clumps of fur lifted on the breeze when he was done.  It was a simple thing to us; we didn't know any better than to just watch and see what would happen.  He lived a long time, to his credit and not ours.

Tinkerbell was the female we had the longest.  (I shudder to think how little we knew about taking proper care of pets back then.)  She had litters of kittens that were raised in flattened tunnels of golden grasses that grew on our property, a rural and semi-wild area in the early years of my childhood.  Tinkerbell was attentive to her kittens.  I spent hours watching their interplay, listening to her little sounds as she responded to their squeals and cries, tiny mews.  She licked them clean and nursed them to their hearts' content and looked immensely pleased with herself as they suckled.  Those were sweet quiet hours to witness and experience feline instincts and behavior, and I was fascinated.  The kittens looked so small and weak as they pawed and groped for a nipple with tiny pink paws and mouths, and then nursed quietly with their eyes tight shut, ears back and forth with the motion of drinking.  They smelled of dusty fur, half damp from the licking, and staggered under the force of her busy tongue when she raked it across their flanks and heads.  I'd stick my finger into the path of a tongue stroke and feel the coarse surface clean it indiscriminately.  She kept her eyes closed as she did the cleaning and didn't care if she had washed a finger or a kitten.

I imitated the way Tinkerbell would grasp a kitten by the nape of its neck and lift it up so it hung down, a kitten ball, patiently waiting to be deposited somewhere else.  I saw its instinctive curl-up with tail tucked between its legs passively.  I mimicked her voice that called kittens to her, and the kittens came to me.  I pretended I was one of the little ones, calling her as if I were lost and needed help, and she came to me anxiously.  It was like magic, and the cats trusted me; I knew this was an honor and very special.

I most loved to watch the gang of kittens playing wildly on the small back lawn under the willow tree and liquid maple where they scooted around in the leaves and clumps of grass.  There's nothing funnier and more entertaining than the antics of kittens at play.  They were chasing, tackling, dancing on their hind legs in surprise when a sister or brother attacks from behind a small clump or twig.  They worried and chewed each other's bellies and legs, raising squeals of protest and then all would run pell-mell to another area or a few feet up a tree trunk, dropping down on the chaser and squashing them momentarily.

Then, exhausted by all the mania and false terror, they'd call Tinkerbell who had been resting idly in the shade, unconcerned by the feints and attacks of kittens gamboling and tumbling in the yard.  She'd rouse herself and call them to her with a peculiar purring mrrowwww, and they'd trot lightly over to her.  With their fur combed backwards by her rough tongue again and sleep lowering their eyelids, they'd flop down in the shade and flake out flat, unconscious in a twitching sleep very soon after.

The warm sun, like this morning's sun, in the midafternoon hours, burned hot and wrapped the summer days in lazy splendor, a time of perfection and ease.

Pacific Grove's Summer is Here

I was just thinking about summer, how much I miss summer weather living in Pacific Grove.  About one or two days every seven or eight, we get a sunny spell of weather and we all become very happy and come to realize that summer is not just a children's fairy tail like Santa Claus.  There really is a summer; it's just not visible here.

Virtually the one single difference between summer and winter is that there is more daylight in summer.  I wear the exact same clothes now that I did in winter.  It kind of makes you feel like you are existing in a state of suspended animation, ready to be awakened for your real life when the season finally changes for good.

The light outside right now looks just like when it was 7 AM this morning, six hours ago.  I suspect that fog fuzzes out linear time in the Groove, so we can make it any time we want.  So, I say it's 10 AM - a pretty nice time of day as hours go.  I'll stick with that for a while, maybe until September, October, who knows.  I think it has a sort of freeing quality to be unable to know what time it is.

A decision will be made by someone - God? - who will finally say:  Your ankles have been stiff and cold for long enough; you may have warmth for an entire summer once again.  Rise up and live joyfully.
I actually dream of that, sadly enough.

I wonder:  Is this for real?  Or am I in a weird box indoors where a bright light is turned on behind a screen of gray for a certain amount of time every day.  There could be a grumpy old man pulling levers and ropes, faking us all out with the idea that someday, if we are all hopeful enough, if we pray and light candles, supplicate before shrines, we will have a warm languid summer just like the rest of the country does.

Pagrovians give their dogs sweaters to wear in the summer.  They don't barbecue or lounge around on lawn chairs under shade trees drinking beer with their buddies while the kids play on Slip-N-Slides on big green lawns; the kids would freeze outside and die.  There are not porch swings to idle away sultry evenings.  Deer don't shed their winter coats; they steal ours.  Everyone's huddled around fireplaces in the summer, listening to stories about something called The Sun, a legendary bright orb in the sky.

Time for me to go look for my electric blanket and plug it in, wrap up in it.  I'll pretend I'm baking in the summer heat so I can drink a tall cool glass of something good.  It's a comforting thought.  

Summer Hike - Part 1

At the end of the paved road, we stop the car and notice the sound of everything else in the world that the car's roar was drowning out.  And some unseen part of the hot part of the engine is ticking.  It feels like molecules are settling into a different order when you stop driving.

We shuffle around inside the car, prepare to stand up on our stiff legs and take stock of the area.

We've been driving for hours, stopping to use rest stops and stretch, find water to drink.  It's been a long haul, but we're there -- here now -- at long last.

Moving across pavement in a car doing 80 is no way to know a landscape really; it's the way to get through it, to the other side of it, without it touching you.  Now that we're standing on dry ground in the open air with no one around, our senses are awakening.  Nose is telling us about dry grass, hot pitch on pine bark, melting tar patches on the road.  Eyes are telling us about midday sun bleaching color out of everything, asking for dark glasses.  Ears are telling us about Stellar jays, cicadas and grasshoppers whose dry legs' rubbing is rhythmic, a strange harsh soothing zshinn, zshinn, zshinnn.

The trunk is opened up and we grunt into our backpacks, lace our boots on and check for other gear.  Not much needs to be said.  It's a transition time when bodies and minds are preparing for the next task:  Hiking, living outdoors, relying on our wits instead of electronic gadgetry and manufactured sounds.  We find ourselves taking deep breaths and checking internal sensations for readiness.  Then we both feel the little adrenaline buzz of excitement, happy to be embarking on a journey, literally leaving the usual road behind.  We lock up the car and give it a grateful pat on the hood as we walk past it.

"Let's go!"

It's hot and dry in the Sierra pines.  We walk through a small gate with our backpacks clanking and rattling until we adjust them, cinching down straps and rearranging gear.  Dust puffs up around our ankles with each step, a soft mouse gray, fine as a lady's face powder.  Our boots, socks and legs are like chameleons, turning the same color as the dust and trailside plants and we blend in as if invisible from the knees down.

I have a bandanna around my neck that I've soaked in water, and it's feeling like a cool kiss on my neck; I like it very much.  My legs are settling into the natural movement of walking.  Energy is flowing in them and my whole body is up and running.  I imagine an inner hum.

We are bound for a river, setting out into wilderness, loose in the world of nature where our hearts can be light and life is lived simply.  I am not much for hiking up high with legs that more enjoy long flat stretches, but I appreciate the rewards of a long effort of climbing if I must do it.  A ridgetop will have to be crossed before we can begin our descent to the river valley where we can camp.  In my fresh optimism and good mood, it all seems easy and satisfying.

Five miles to the ridgetop.  Five miles through sun-dappled glens, winding stretches of old fire road, out into open meadows rustling with breeze-blown oat grass and foxtails.  Like much of California, the area has been ranched and fenced for 150 years or more.  We see old faded signs posted on tree trunks, dry termite-riddled posts undermined through the years by flash floods and erosion; they look more like exclamation points than fenceposts with barbed wire nailed to them in three places - top, midway and bottom.  They are coated in the same mouse brown dust we are.

It's very dry this year, the third year of drought.  This trail is mostly shaded and relatively cool, but it's evident plants are stressed by the lack of water.

Amber Memory

I had some honey today, right out of the jar, and I thought of summer in Carmel Valley where I was a child.  The honey was the same color as the dried grass and foxtails that I would pick my way through with bare feet. Silty brown dry dirt, hot but soft on my skin.

There is an intoxicating herbal-floral aroma, a heady fragrance that California shrublands exude.  Sage, bay laurel, coyote brush, grasses, oak, redwood, and the dirt itself are oily and the oils evaporate in hot air, perfuming it and penetrating into the deepest core of the people and animals who live in it, residing in their hearts and souls.  It is a fragrance that asks allegiance and devotion, acknowledgment of its ancient and abiding qualities.  I remember it lingering like the fading sounds of laughter past dark and then finally subsiding entirely in full darkness.  It was the very breath of the summer day, pleasant and sweet.

Brittle amber-colored wild grass crackled and stood like small tipis of dry stalks by August, with a litter of crushed and desiccated leaves and seeds lying about the bases on dry cocoa-brown silt.  Mica flecks twinkled like starry sparks in the dust kicked up with our bare toes.  We'd pick our way across lots and exposed small meadows and fields, using tufts of dry grass to rest on when the skin of our feet felt scorched by the dark earth.  We were explorers, wild Indians, children of imagination looking for and finding small mysteries and clues to worlds unknown to adults and their civilization.  All of nature in the region of our home was textured, fragrant, a beckoning world we needed and wanted to be part of.

A child who has lived in a California coastal valley knows the time of day by the amount of moisture in the air and the strength of the breeze.  Morning air is fresh, dewey and cool, wetted by the lifting fog.  Deer out grazing after dawn pick their way back to thickets and shaded glens to sleep until evening.  Then, midday is still and hot; nothing breathes or sings or chirps; only the bees hum in the sagebrush.  Then, at one o'clock the air lifts and stirs, the wind shifts to the distant reaches of more inland valleys and hills, drawn there by the heat.  The grasses and oaks, hot in the flat light of early afternoon, toss and sway in the push of the wind until just before dusk when everything pauses again.  Then, light seems to settle down into the ground, fading very slowly and fragrantly to its resting place.

Day after day, all summer long, some days cloaked in fog at the coast and some more intensely hot than others, the ocean inhales and exhales its wind over the coastal valleys.  Its gusting, rushing sound is a constant presence in the trees and across hillsides, a hushing sound of respiration that rises and falls, swelling and then dying away, only to rise and fall again.

After being outdoors in the morning before the day was hot, the afternoon wind in the treetops was lulling, soothing us to an enervating torpor.  Lost to daydreaming and reading, we dozed and rested.  Then, as we felt cooler and sensed the dampness of the chill evening coming on, and the fog in the distance, we'd begin a game of hide-and-seek, playing on and on to the dimmest light at dusk and beyond.

Playing, running and calling in the twilight on summer days, inhaling the intoxicating promise of amber light and honey gathered from the sage on the hills and willows by the river, we lived and breathed in the same rhythm set by the wind itself.

At the end of the day, our eyes grew accustomed to the gradual dimness of the evening until after dusk we'd run indoors, pushing and laughing, feeling like wild animals coming home again.  Then we peered goggle-eyed back at the dark from the doors and windows, and then listen for the wakening deer and rustle of their movements in the dry oak leaves.  

Hummingbird musings

A calendar page has turned and we are in September. At last, summer is here in the Groove. As summer arrives, the leaves float lightly from the sycamores and sail across the streets, landing with a scratchy shushing sound. They whirl up again dryly as tires rush past.

It's beautiful here when it's summer/fall. Warmth so long anticipated is a lulling tonic. Riots of bougainvillea blossoms splash color against the adobes of Monterey and clapboard sides of the Victorians here in the Groove, almost too violent a color to take in. I squint sometimes when I see them, but the intensity of the colors please me.

I coddle three rose bushes in my little garden, hoping for an occasional spectacular blossom. They are very fussy and hold out for more pay; I have to hand pick insects off of them, fertilize them just so, groom them in particular ways. In contrast alyssum and Santa Barbara daisies are like Catholics; they breed prolifically and scatter themselves everywhere, requiring an occasional squirt of a hose now and then. They bloom in any soil. Unlike Catholics, who usually smell like garlic - at least the ones I know do - alyssum is as fragrant as honey.

There's a keen little hummingbird that has set up shop in a nearby Monterey pine. It aims its little needle-like beak at a distant flower bush and flies pell mell toward it like a fighter jet. Licking nectar from any flowers that have it on offer, I can't imagine the energy that's needed just to hover as its tongue gathers its fuel. Wings hum at 200 beats per minute I've heard - a blur. Hummingbirds are ferociously territorial. I wonder if they have ever thwanged themselves like darts into fences by accident. Probably not.

I was rummaging around in a potted plant a few days ago when our hummingbird decided to check me out. He flew to within three feet of my head, wings beating like mad. He moved to his left a few feet for a better view and then to his right. Maybe my skin lotion was interesting; maybe not. Rather I think it was the fact that my garden hose was on and he smelled fresh water. I felt intimidated by his rapier beak and my skin seemed very vulnerable to a stab attack if he so chose. Bored, he returned to his high perch in the pine and carried on with his territorial rapid-fire squeaks and chirps, sounding like a tiny rusty hinge up there.

Now that the sun's rays are slanting at a lower and lower angle every day and we feel her heat all day long, we are smiling more, walking less briskly, looking for hammocks in which to swing idly in the afternoon. Summer crowds are finally gone and we in our specific summer/fall groove can drink the sweet wine of patience rewarded.