Monday, April 24, 2006

One of the outer circles of

On Saturday, I was lingering quietly by a seep of running water in Black Rock Canyon, waiting for gray, black and gold finches, black and gold warblers, foppishly crested quail and shy mourning doves to recover from the alarm of my approach. As I waited, they returned, calling to each other, landing on wet sand to drink.

Today, I'm not outside, not with wildlife, not in paradise.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Uncle Andrej

Early this morning (some time between the second and third hitting of the snooze button) a police officer knocked on my door.

Someone had been arrested with a car full of stolen stuff, and among it was my copy of Susan R. Matthews' WARRING STATES, still in its Amazon box, though the box had been opened. They had taken it out of my mailbox (I'm also missing at least one Netflix and a bunch of catalogs and suchlike. Luckily they missed my bank statement).

Aside from their obvious disappointment that this was a book and not something like a DVD that would be easier to sell, I like to think that the miscreants looked inside the book and got a nice interrogation scene for their trouble.

I hope they dream of Uncle Andrej.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

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.