I love driving out to the ranch after dark, especially after a rain. The trees loom beside the road in tangled thickets of live oak and towering Ponderosa pines, the glowing silver froth of manzanita bushes, and behind that, a rich, velvety darkness. The tunnel occasionally breaks into steep, golden hills dotted with ancient Valley Oaks, their branches sweeping the ground, and the grass glowing its own eerie shade under the starlight. Theres always a light breeze flowing up into the mountains from the Delta, but the silence on a winter night is its own thing, the sort that magnifies every other sound and makes you hush your own voice. Full moon nights cast long shadows from the trees, hanging low and huge over the hills, and during the summer, the dry grass reflects the light until you could almost read by moonlight. But if the moon isnt up yet, or its a new moon, the stars are intense points of light in a perfectly black sky, swirled through by the Milky Way. The city is a dim glow on the very edge of one horizon, but the lands behind us reach up into the mountains and theres no light pollution from three directions. And after a rain like this, and a warm day, fog curls up from the roads and blurs the ground, adding another layer of surrealism to everything. Its weird, creepy, and absolutely beautiful. But then you get out of the car and find three cats and one skunk waiting for you, and everything is set aside in the need to not piss the skunk off.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 04:14:55 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015