More thoughts in the time of COVID-19 …
I think I owe all of you an apology (seems I’m having to offer apologies a lot lately).
When I’m feeling down, I need to stay away from the computer. Go hide in a book or at my spinning wheel for a bit of time.
I was down … but I’m better now.
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This morning I am off early to Yreka to call on the County Mapping Technician and the Senior Planner for the County. Maybe we can finally get the designation of Dale Creek Road (which is a private road running through the western part of Hammond Ranch) changed from a US Forest Service road to a private road. For some reason this took a lot of phone calls, negative responses from County employees, and explanations of the reason for the change even though we have a letter from the Forest Service saying it isn’t their road and a State Appellate Court decision stating it is a private road.
I’ll report back on whether this time we succeed or what the next hoop is through which we are required to jump.
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The death toll in this county reached 5 last friday … 7 by monday. That’s a lot for a county as sparsely populated as this one, and they all seem to be here in the south county area.
I am seeing more masks now. As I was adjusting mine to go into the grocery store last week I saw a man look at me then turn and go back to his car to get his mask. That counts as a win.
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Still no snow. However, the view out my window was a good one last saturday. The sky was overcast and there was wind. That combination made the colours near the ground muted but clear. And the wind set the remaining birch leaves to scintillating, even dropping in a style similar to a rather stately pavanne.
The maple and the catalpa are both bare. The birches soon will be.
Of course the evergreens are ever green but the shades of green are muted and tinged with grey-brown. All the ground cover is grey-brown as well. Not colourful enough for autumn and not white enough for winter. We seem to be suspended between seasons.
Only sixteen days until solstice and the days will begin to lengthen again. Currently the morning trip out to the chickens is usually around 0800 or a bit later, and the evening lock-in is fifteen or twenty minutes before 1700.
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The threat of fire is nearly non-existent here now. Things where we are seem to be wet enough to make fire controllable with more rain predicted for the next couple of days. But there is a dangerous, destructive fire down south tied to Santa Ana winds. Those winds coming over the Sierra Nevadas are most of the driving force behind the California fires and they never get as far north as we are.
I got a call from a cousin in Florida checking to make sure we are okay and it struck me that folks on the east coast really don’t understand California. That fire is fifteen or sixteen hours driving time south of us, still in California. If you were in Rochester, NY on Lake Erie (where my son used to live) the fire would be somewhere in north Georgia, or if you were in central Florida it would be near the North Carolina-Virginia border.
As a lifelong Californian I gawk at driving twelve hours and going through as many as eight or ten states.
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I’ll take care of the chickens as I go out to the car and leave you with these wise words from a funny man. They are worth making a part of an every morning routine …
“Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself that I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.”
— Groucho Marx
So, still hoping … ‘til next week …