The holiday began with Ian cutting chard leaves and eating them cooked, then playing the letter game with me on the floor after supper. A return to the rapport we used to share when he spent more time here, not just intervals between school and home.
I’ve anticipated this holiday for weeks, though I wasnt sure I’d be able to get away. I didnt pack my gear until just before leaving last night. I’ve been longing for a respite from the campaigns–Jan’s and Obama’s–and from my own compulsive clicking on the news of world economic collapse. I’ve found surcease only while working in the garden and on my upcoming talk on “God and Nature” for the Methodist Church in Morro Bay.
After Dennis took Ian home last night, I pedaled across campus toward Poly Canyon. Car, bike and pedestrian traffic bustled on the approaches to the new residential complex at its mouth. The parking structure, swimming pool and athletic field lights cast a garish glow on the huge eucalypti and the mountainsides, but halfway up the canyon it was replaced by moonlight and the hooting of owls. Beyond the Peterson Ranch buildings, I crossed paths with two other bicyclists wearing headlamps as bright as an automobile’s.
I parked the bike by the dirt road near the junction of the south and middle forks of the creek at the base of Cuesta Ridge, a spot insulated from noise and open to a broad sky. The cricket sounds were overtaken by the rising and falling roar of a crowd way back on campus, probably a soccer game. By the time I’d finished unpacking and fiddling with my camera, the roar disappeared, and the chorus of crickets returned, now with its own throbbing pulse, like the sound of the stars. Through my binoculars I saw black shadows of mountains on the bright side of the half moon’s dividing line and white summits peeking through the dark side. As I settled into my sleeping bag, a family of coyotes yodeled to one another across the valley. Overhead, a shooting star stitched in and out of existence.
I awoke at 2:30. The moon had set and Orion stared down at me. I rested my camera on my shoe and took a fifteen second exposure with manual focus at 1600 ISO.
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