A Busy Sunday

The trucks in the field outside our bedroom began assembling at 7:30 this morning...a maneuver which involves much beeping when backing. That's not a welcome sound anytime, and certainly not at 7:30 on Sunday morning. It's difficult enough to come to terms with the reality one is waking up to without beeping trucks. 

A cup of coffee and the arrival of a tree cutting crew next door convinced us that we had to get away from ground zero and go for a walk. I had an ulterior motive which was to take a picture of a fence* on Highway12 that I've always quite liked. It might work in place of the fence with the stars on it which makes up part of the facade of our house,  and has the added advantage of being mostly metal. 

If our goal was to get away from the burnt hills and fields we didn't succeed. Instead we followed its path along Highway 12, past a huge staging area filled with PG&E trucks, a helicopter and a massive pile of telephone poles. and big white bags that contain all the stuff that they put at the tops of the poles. When we arrived at the park John discovered he had forgotten his mask. Given our situation we had almost forgotten that there is a pandemic. Fortunately I had some paper ones in the car.

When we got back two helicopters were making trips from the staging area we had just passed to the staging area at the top of our field. I walked up to the top of the field to watch, and was fascinated by the balletic precision with which these huge machines lowered themselves within fifty feet of the ground, hovered while the cargo dangling beneath their bellies was unhooked and rose again to turn and fly back over Wildwood Mountain.

Catching up with the newspaper, something I do less and less often, I waded through articles about wildfires and blackouts, a seven month old pandemic, tens of millions of people out of work and a president who threatens to ignore the results of the coming election. But emergency planners would like to add earthquakes to our list of things to worry about.  In case we had forgotten, Thursday was International ShakeOut Day, and time to remind Californians to "Drop. Cover And Hold on."

I think we're already doing that....