quick takes-none fake’s
“My people will be in touch with your people.” I got my ear down to the ground, listening for footsteps.
Reporting from Ft. Collins, Colorado my source informs me that going outside sucks, that air quality from the western wildfire season has been unnerving, “apocalyptic is not too strong a word.” They are all but ready to begin taking antidepressants.
Covid-19 infections have gone back up on the Navajo Nation. My sources tell me they relaxed and let their guard down too soon. Our people of the first nation have been hit hard and too many have died.
Further south in Patagonia my sources report the monsoons have turned the high desert of Santa Cruz County a verdant green, that there is an upswing in hope, but this hamlet of a few thousand people feel that they are getting a little out over their rural anti-venom and ration of whiskey for such hope to be harvested, canned and setup in the pantry for future difficulties.
I note last weekend the annual Buena Vista, Colorado burro race was held. Happy burros trotting along a fourteen-mile course with their ever-faithful partners galloping alongside. Running a half marathon from 7800' to 11,000' is what fun looks like up here.
My sources from Amador City (smallest town in California by size-198 acres) reports the turtles down in the creek are getting along, the bocce ball court has been groomed and ready for a tournament to breakout at any moment. It has been hot, dry and that the wasps have been aggressive this summer.
Report from Napa came in triggered by a grassfire that had set off more post traumatic stress disorders in survivors of the numerous larger regional wine country wildfires of the last 5 years.
Hiking out of Afton, Wyoming has been a near religious experience. Recent monsoonal events have turned the Vista Prater Trail muddy but passable with rewarding views not a mile up into the watershed.
An Oregon horse breeder moving a stud on Interstate 5 had a tire on their trailer blow and reported cigarette butts, aluminum cans and improperly disposed facemasks littering the side of the highway where repairs were made. Especially the risk of fire induced by careless cigarette tossed from vehicles provoked breeder to wonder, “What are people thinking?”
Particularly curvaceous Edmonton, Alberta friend has set down into words what concerns her this summer. “You don’t know fear until you tried on a dress too small and thought you were stuck in it forever.”
Harstine Island in the Puget Sound suffered from the heatwave until they didn’t. Brave souls are raising a second schipperke and reporting the dog is as disobedient as their former untrainable schipperke and that the cooler weather has been good for the blooming ranunculus. Wildfire smoke has not been too bad… yet.
Pot farming in British Columbia continues. From an undisclosed location somewhere in the interior my source reports a good crop will be ready for harvest by the end of August. No word yet on how morel hunting has gone or if chanterelles are ready just yet. Border between USA and Canada is due to open soon, or was, that may be put off due to the virus.
While in British Columbia reported all time high temperature of 92.7 degrees Fahrenheit was set on Saltspring Island in July. I am to understand that online poker games were played as scheduled and that the Saltspringers complained but that the grousing changed nothing.
Laurel Canyon, California contacts have moved back aboard their ketch rigged sailboat at Channel Island Harbor. Escaping San Fernando Valley summer heat to idle away the balmy August days along the coast has hopes on high.
Still, it is wildfire season, the summer has been hotter than average, and it appears the delta-variant has muted the luster of better days, that we’d turned the corner on the pandemic and a more normal life was soon in reach is now beyond our fingertips.
A piece of what we are living through has to do with resilience, to do with endurance, and piece to do with our vaccinated population coaxing our unvaccinated resistors to come to their senses and do the right thing and help us bring this pathogenic trail of sickness, hospitalization, and death to an end.
A low-pressure disturbance off the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic is being watched carefully as this potential hurricane begins tracking west across the Atlantic toward the Gulf of Mexico.
Originally published at http://danasmith.com on August 2, 2021.
