Still in the spin cycle August 16

Still in the spin cycle from a whirlwind trip to Tuolumne County , visiting friends, attending two festivals, and a side road trip. I left early Friday Morning and got back here to Berry Creek 7:45PM yesterday.

I didn't get into Yosemite as hopefully planned. The view of the park from Fran's deck showed smoke. I read that the forest service is burning in there. Sometimes they burn the underbrush to prevent larger forest fires. They must have thought this was a good year to do it because everything was still so green and there is so much water after a record snow fall last winter.

Ill just start with Friday morning.

I left in time to see the moon-set over the lake. Crossing the first bridge, noticed a fiery orange reflection on the water, coming from the direction of the dam , the source of the glow was hidden beyond the curve of a ridge. Manuvering the car carefully around the winding curves and dips I was startled by the view of a huge orange and blue orb hanging low over the horizon, just above the dam, like a big ripe fruit about ready to fall. It was just a quick peek-a-boo of a look as i drove on around the next and the next and the next curve in the road.

I pulled into the turnout at the suspension bridge just in time to see the top of it still wide and fiery orange slipping down below the tree-line. But driving on, coming down into Oroville , there it was again. So Big , bright and orange.....over Chico ...

I couldn't get my settings on the camera to capture a photo of that for you.

Arco was already a hopping spot at 5AM where i filled the tank for my road trip.

Traveling down 70 south, flat land, fruit and nut orchards stretch right all the way to the costal range and to my left a great stretch of grassland and the outline of the Sierras. It wasn't long before i could see out of my corner of my eye a bright Yellow light fanning out from the sun which was still low in the east beyond my vision. It bursts suddenly up, from out of the mountains spreading daylight into the whole valley.

It was a good smooth drive to Lodi. I get off the highway there before i reach Stockton which is a bitch to drive through and get in the proper lane. From Lodi, i travel 12 East to oh, somewhere North of Wallace....OH maybe Lockford....where it seems like all the houses have horses in their back yards.....

But after that, its the farmland. It's just such an excited feeling driving down a straight , flat road through the farmland. On one side of you are rows and rows of Orchard, on the other rows and rows of tall corn, can you imagine the sunlight shining through the corn in the morning? It smells so fresh. And in your happy reverence of sunrise and the climate and the abundance of crops and sweet fragrance , it's easy to forget to notice the first shallow hills and dips of the golden foothills. Here is where my reverence morphs into exhuberant joy. I cannot describe the folding of the earth in the foothills. At first low and rolling, with small groups of or just lone standing, gnarly oaks, with their long morning shadows reaching across the pale yellow native grasses sparkling in the hot sun,contrasting to the jet black cattle grazing or lying in the in the cool shade of those old silver grey oaks. And then the small valleys between the hills become deeper crevices, and the vegetation in those deep folds are brighter greens and mixed with pine and brush and the road gets curvier and the dips , deeper........ and then when you finally reach the peak of one of those long hills there appears the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range.....

Calaveras County,

Tuolumne County

and deeper, into the range, into The Great Stanislaus Wilderness.

It is an awesome sight. Another joyous, reverent, momentous feeling. Like your chest will just explode from sheer happiness.

It feels like home.

Another place, like Berry Creek, like Ogunquit, not where i live, but feeling like im home. So what's that about? I do have family in Berry Creek, and "family" in Tuolumne County, and i go to Ogunquit with my best friends, who are like family.....and in Connecticut where i live, all my sisters, Dad, Kids, Grands..... my traditional family. I wonder now, what does home really mean? And how can different places feel like home to me?

I do not feel like that if i am driving in Massachusettes, New Hampshire, Vermont. Would i feel like that in Washington? Texas? Florida?

Im willing to find out .

Sorry, Attention Deficit Disorder.

Soon ill write about the Sonora Nights, street Festival and the Fire on the Mountain Blues Festival, and the fire that took Armando and Viola from us and devastated Perry. Ill write about my visit with Fran and Nicki and Nalatie with her beautiful little native garden. About Ange and Marty and the drive home to Berry Creek. . And the pitbull puppy and coyote convergence last night.

but now, im going to wash the sap off the car before i pick string-beans and apples and peppers.

ps, the farmers market in Sonora is the best, where tomatoes and peaches are sweet and tangy picked ripe and sold cheap if you go late morning.

And about street festival food ie: wine , blues festival food ie: rum punch, and reunion food ie: sipping whiskey......to the best of my recollection.

much love to everyone

Mom/Sal