Paradise and back

At Joshua Tree last week Scott's Orioles, brilliant yellow and black, were singing in Black Rock Canyon and cute, portly Gambel's Quails gave their odd cries. A male kestrel took wing from the top of a Joshua tree and blurred into flying light. This is an hour and a half away from me. I have to remember that.

In the Santa Cruz Mountains, four hundred miles north, Allen's Hummingbirds flashed their molten copper throats, Northern Rough-Winged Swallows moved like silk over a pond, yellow irises stood up from the water's surface, rain fell, Wilson's Warblers the color of the irises sang aggressively in chamise brush, a Least Tern stood on a cliff over the mad ocean.

I'm back from spring break. I don't know why I find it so hard to reconcile with the place where I live now. I don't know why I feel beleaguered here, endangered.

The "Offroaders for Bush" bumper sticker I saw on a truck this morning illustrates part of it, no doubt.