A thousand shades of green and grey (original) (raw)
footpad tranquil
April 18 2007, 17:39
In the past I've always been to California in the beginning of summer, when the heat and drought are beginning to sear the hills and turn everything to shades of dun. Now I arrived in mid-April and it was still spring, just, sort of: for the first time I got to see the hills when they're green.
For the first couple of days California greeted me with perfect spring weather, bright and cool and cloudless, until on Saturday a weather front moved in and the clouds gathered and darkened with rain. "English weather," I said happily, and raikawolf took me and yotie for a long walk in the Sunol Regional Wilderness.
Sunol is steep, hilly: forested hillsides with lush high meadows, weathered rocky outcrops, and rivers running over beds of rounded stones. dogcandy came with us, bringing a malamute puppy and his beautiful husky-mix Mackenzie. So our tally of dogs was three, with enough bounce and zest for any normal pack of six. Kuma had a wonderful time, especially since he'd conceived a robust affection for Mackenzie and a couple of times had to be dissuaded from trying to ravish her. Apart from Kuma's loutish moments, it was wonderful to watch the three of them dashing in company through the rain-laden grass. Pack, I thought, and smiled, and ran after them, leaving the rest of the humans behind.
Up on the grassy hill-tops, the wind was chill and the deep-grey clouds scudded by, gravid with rain. From time to time, watery sunlight broke through and glittered on the waters and the meadows while waves of wind swept through the grass. In my time I've padded around some bits of the world, but I've seen few places more beautiful than Californian hills in the rain.
÷
All the way up, there was talk of the Angry Cows and their beastly behaviour towards passing dog-walkers. We met them on the way down, but they must have been in a tranquil mood because they showed, at most, a gentle bovine curiosity, barely enough to distract them from the continual mental effort of chewing their laden cud. We washed the worst of the mud off our feet, climbed in our respective cars, and went home to find food.
In the evening a bunch of friends came round to visit, but I was assailed by a strange lassitude and curled up on an airbed in the office, soon to sink into a deep and dreamless slumber. And keikan picked me up the next morning, but that's another day's story.