Run & Hide

You can run but you can't hide. Southern California has had over 16" of rain since the beginning of the year, several inches more than the normal amount for an entire year. I came to Vermont for a few days of checking on our old farm house and to ski in a cross country race a neighbor holds each year on his land. I finished the race, nearly last, and today feel as if I have gone ten rounds with Sugar Ray Robinson, my old hero. And it is snowing. 8" so far and continuing.

I am cooking a Zone Note about all this, I think, but a preliminary note to say I think we humans have too high a regard for our ability to transcend the conditions that pretty much determine the fate of our fellow creatures.

Chief among them the weather. I always find myself tentatively watching weather when I migrate between San Diego and Vermont. Makes me anxious. I feel more vulnerable than I like. Because, I think, when I have been either place for more than a week, the weather is whatever it is and I adjust. But initially, it feels as if I have wandered into an alien place, a place I neither know nor understand.

It is, I suspect, what keeps me alert. I love it almost as much as I hate it.