I desperately longed to be somewhere other than work. I daydreamed about being outside under overcast skies, dogs roaming around nearby, putting my back into the good kind of weeding when the ground is soft but not muddy and the roots come up with the green.
I thought about being inside in my Mad Scientist lab (kitchen table) playing around with essential oils and beakers of creatively mixing up new combinations. I would be starting a loaf of Artisan bread at 11am sharp, and curling into the sofa with coffee cup in hand, looking out onto a world that in its own invisible way looks back.
I have grown fond of the busy stillness that settles on a place where humans do not dominate. People are present, in the hay trucks rumbling by from time to time and bright yellow crop-dusters swooping down low over the almond orchards as the blossoms burst open. We see men sometimes in the fields with white wide brimmed hats, walking and stooping, adjusting the irrigation pipes, quietly tending the crops. But only at harvest time do humans take the land hostage with an army of night balers with loud diesel engines and big, bright floodlights.
We watch the trickle of lights of the freeway heading past, wondering if anyone thinks of this little, lived-in town. I can't hear the cars and trucks unless the wind blows in our direction. A blessing.
At night just as mosquito season kicks into high gear, we coat ourselves in repellent and park ourselves on the porch to watch the dance of the dragonflies. We can tell when it is about to begin: thousands and thousands of dragonflies begin to gather in the yard and all up and down the road for the first mosquito larvae hatching. It happens just this once, once a year. They swarm together, gently moving the air, waiting.
The mosquitos are almost too small to see until the little brown specks pour into the air. They hatch all at once. The dragonflies dive in and excitedly feed, darting this way and that, their colors glinting yellows and oranges, blues and greens in the fading light.
It is an intense show. When they tire, they settle anywhere: on your fingertip or shoe lace, on the brim of your cap, across the backs of your chairs, hanging from a leaf. They gently swirl around us in a companionable way and we bear witness to a part of life we never knew existed.
And so back to my daydreams, and wondering if, while I am away, the little gray feral tabby next door with white paws and pretty markings has caught another mouse.
