[Diamond, not the Great Pacifier] Would it not be total hubris not to acknowledge that this living planet is striving in every way to defend itself by any and all means possible against the ongoing self-and-everything-else annihilatative activities of delusionally self-designated “sapiens”? And while we’re at it what’s so enlightening about your prediction that life will be nothing like we know it in twenty years?  I’m sure there’ll still be some shards of the present floating around, just as, seeing as how all this stuff is so hopelessly unevenly distributed, remnants from twenty years ago are floating around our completely transformed “present”.  Of course,

to the profitability of such as Mr. Diamond, apocalypses no matter how simplistic will continue to sell books, or Kindles or mind implants or whatever the Next Total Change will bring.

Whatever the case, time to go…

time to exchange the Wonders of BeniciaArt

for opening roads and clearing skies,

making Monday the day we took 80 east to 89 to

Sierra Valley to

[after Hallelujah Junction] Honey Lake with

lunch before Sand Pass where Aggie much enjoyed rolling in the cowshit and, finally,

Wall Spring.

Whether as evidence of my theory that the living planet might be doing something about us or

not the abundance of life was intense…followed by an abundance of rain.

hail, etc.

and so forth; if you didn’t like the weather, wait ten minutes or

look out the other window.

About a year ago Lefty McDermitt was watching all this for the last time…but I feel him here still

and, on this anniversary, more than ever.  Only a dog…

as life goes on greener than

was ever seen [all these buildings and sculptures used to appear to be MUCH bigger].

Memorial Day Weekend initially promised weather less volatile

maybe…at least it brought creatures out for the sun,

as well as reptiles curious about the work on their home, the shed.

Saturday Aggie [not shown] and I took a run into town and back by way of Planet X

whose annual Pottery Sale was utterly mobbed…after a look at John’s oils I came away

with two plates and went home to mine, finding a van packed with three Parkers

[descendants of next door’s Original Homesteader] parked amiably in the driveway with rumors of others down the road they couldn’t reach.  I encouraged them to come back Sunday and they

promised, once they’d visited other ancestral haunts up Buffalo Creek, to do so.

By BBQ time there were spits of rain but it wasn’t until nearly bed that I remembered my keys were probably hopefully still in the lock of our P.O. box so made the drive, dark as pitch and not a soul to be seen, to Gerlach. The keys were there, but not alone; someone else’s were left in a neighboring lock as well.  I met a lone white pickup halfway down the dirt and would have missed the gate were it not for the reflector I’d put out there after Linda drove by it years ago.

…and so to bed, rain in the night.

Right.