True Dirt

Yosemite comes to Oakland

Since my last post my beloved laptop, Buffy the Microsoft Slayer II, has expired, I've leafleted the neighborhood with homemade flyers about the neighbor's plan to cut down the oak trees, dropped off my comment letter to the City of Oakland Tree Reviewer, and gone to a job interview.

Meanwhile, in the garden, the robins and squirrels have made off with most of the California grape crop (and dispersed much of it, slightly digested, on the plastic lawn chairs, the hammock, the Adirondack chair, and the deck); the racoons have mangled but not destroyed the dahlias, tomatoes and green beans; somebody (?) dug into the pumpkin, saved from the racoon pillage and set on the barbeque pallet to dry out and turn orange. It was rotting and stank so bad I had to dismantle the stack of wooden pallets it had been sitting on and which serve as our Weber mini grill cooking area, and wash everything down. And the Steller's Jays have moved in.

Standing in the front yard yesterday I looked out over the sunburnt weeds and parched August landscape and was suddenly transported to the aroma of dried pine needle and the thin heat of granite boulders from long ago Sierra camping trips. It was the rattling "sckrey sckrey sckrey sckrey" of the Steller's Jays. They are mountain birds. They are the background music of dusty campground picnic tables and shady pine groves--not exotic Indian laurels and Bermuda grass lawns. Along with the aroma of vanilla scented Jeffrey pines and the sparkle of mica in fields of stone, the sound of Steller's Jays is packed in the memory drawer with grueling half-day drives across the scorching Great Central Valley of California, stops at roadside stands to buy warm peaches and cool watermelon, the slow ascent to the Sierra foothills through sunswept tawny grasslands that give way to sparse stands of Ponderosa pines and, finally, the top of the hour-long, twisting Old Priest Grade to Big Oak Flat and the road to Yosemite.

Now here they are, the whole family of three, hopping up the branches of my scarlet oak, the silky black "mohawk" shimmying as s/he cocks his head to look through the kitchen window. Is this just a passing fancy or are they shopping for real estate? Have the Human droves littering the mountains and mountain valleys with Land Rovers and 4,000-square foot nesting boxes driven the Steller's to the city? I wonder. And I welcome them.

(photo from Encyclopedia: Yosemite Valley )

Posted by briggs at August 24, 2005 9:48 AM