The Tenacity of Life
Pleasure is spread through the earth in stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.
-William Wordsworth
The view from the Ranch where I walked today. I painted this painting a few years back on a day much like today.
I went for a walk this morning with my old dog Lucky. She sniffed and barked at birds and phantoms, and followed the scent of last night’s fox or bobcat or stray cat with her stout short legged body bolting with such vigor and speed that seems impossible as seen prone on the couch- belly up and snoring. We walked the open pasture that rises up above road and looked out long across the valley of vineyards in full fall color. The hills and paths are just springing green, only an inch or so of rain has fallen in this drought stricken place, but the seeds that have lain dry and waiting were ready, sinking roots into the newly dampen earth to start a fresh green journey through another cycle of seasons. You my dear readers who don’t live in California and are always in the greening life, may not understand what a dramatic switch this is. We Californians like to call our hills golden in the dry hot summer and fall, which they are for a while but then they turn a brown grey like a burro’s back, waiting, waiting for rain. It came last week and this week the green has returned. Visible at first only in the mowed paths now showing more as the weeks advance stretching above the bent brown heads of it’s fallen parents. And today I was here to claim this bright, tenacious gift of exuberant hope.
Valerie
We were blessed with rain this summer after three years of drought, and suddenly the bare, open countryside full of yellow grasses and mesquite trees was alive with wildflowers. It looked like foreign terrain.
molmsteado
Nothing is more hopeful than the pale pale green that first shows itself after even a little rain….and to see the hills turn green again is a miracle!