The Road Less Taken

Los Alamos Road goes behind our house and winds its way steeply up the hill to Hood Mountain Regional Park. It's a rural road without sidewalks, but it leads to a fair number of farms and homes widely scattered around the foothills above us. The majority of the traffic on it consists of service vehicles, or cyclists in full kit, toiling up or whizzing down it. I don't really like to walk on it, but sometimes it is a necessary evil.

This morning I saw some interesting black walnut shells, which reveal an interesting pattern when they are cracked in half, and decided to pick up anything interesting on a small stretch of the road for a still life. The cigarette butts concerned me, because they are undoubtedly tossed from vehicles onto the tinder dry verge. I considered including them, along with beer and soda can as some kind of statement, but that presented me with the dilemma of touching these, and even less palatable items, with my bare hands, so I limited myself to more natural offerings.

With the exception of the crow feather, it is significant that everything else in the collection is brown or tan or yellow, a microcosm of the drought.

Today the State of California announced stiff fines for anybody who wastes water by hosing off their sidewalks, driveways and cars, or has an exceptionally green lawn….
What next, water police?