June marked the end of spring on California's central coast and the beginning of five months of dormancy that often erupted in fire. Mustard's yellow robes had long since turned red, then brown. Fog and sun mixed to create haze. The land had rusted. The mountains, once blue-hued with young oaks and blooming ceanosis, were tan and gray. I walked across the fallen blossoms of five yucca plants: only the bare poles of their stems remained to mark where their lights had shone the way.
Gretel EhrlichAs fog moved to the mainland I heard a flock of birds fly over. They sounded like a dress rustling, a dress being unfastened and dropping to the floor. Fog came unpinned like hair. On the beach cliffs, great colonies of datura - jimson weed - with their white trumpet flowers, looked like brass bands.
Gretel EhrlichEverything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still.
Gretel EhrlichAnimals give us their constant, unjaded faces, and we burden them with our bodies and civilized ordeals.
Gretel EhrlichThere is nothing in nature that can't be taken as a sign of both mortality and invigoration.
Gretel Ehrlich