Andrew's View of the Week

It’s Sunday and the first day in a while that truly feels like spring. The fruit trees have their blossoms. the kitties are playing outside, and I heard a bird singing. On the air is the promise of spring and the rains fading into memory.

Rain, California rain. It doesn’t come for years then it’s ferocious. Years of never-ending drought punctuated by flood.

Flood. Muddy waters chewing up river banks and crashing over dams. Awesome, unstoppable power. Trees topple in its path, rocks slam into rock, dirt turns to mud, and mud turns to a dreaded brown river. The road loses its firm foundation and collapses down into the valley. Solid hills become soft as the angle of repose sends soil, rock, tree and bush across the freeway, reminding humans that nature still holds power.

Such is my California. Rock, dirt, water and trees standing silent for years and then in a fury unleashed by time and tides rises to attack the feeble roads and bridges we build.

Our monuments to progress. Our temples of technology. Our audacity to assume we can control our world.

The simple fluffy cloud drifts overhead. Changing its shape, first a rabbit, then a doggie, and then darker. A wind rises as more clouds join the chorus and soon lets the tears fall. Mother nature, crying at the scars on the land and the poison in the air.

And the rain keeps coming. The tempo of the drops; a light minuet builds; until a symphony of water and wind the crescendo to the final movement of water crashing over our trivial human obstacles of weirs, dams, and spillways. As the rains recede, the rivers rise as if to applaud the sky and sends its waters to streets lined with cars and houses.

Such are my thoughts with spring in the air and the hope of summer fruit, with kittens playing in the yard.

Till next week,
Andrew