Some mixture of sunshine, pine duff, marble quarries, manzanita, horses, buckeyes and red clay make the California foothills smell like they do. Like iron. Like ozone.
The heat made me recall the term "blue blazes." Not a cloud, not a puff of air until evening, and then the mosquitos come hungry.
During the day, from the top of the hill, we could look out across the valley and see the air shimmering like gold with a million dragonflies just above the treetops. It's a bad time to be a mosquito. It's a great time to be a bluejay.
My Grandpa bought his 3 acres of steep rocky hillside for $3,000 cash in 1968. He spent 30 years building his house. He blasted 100 feet into the side of the hill and that's the basement. A big boulder juts into the basement, supports the shelf where they keep all the fruit and vegetables they can. He used the rock that was blasted out to build the walls of the house, which are all about 4 feet thick. He bought for a song the lumber from an old mill that was demolished, sanded it down, framed his house with 10 by 12 inch beams, each one hand cut and measured for a perfect fit. The top of the roof is fifty feet above the driveway. It looks like a big stone castle. There are stone and brick steps leading up to the front door, which is about ten feet above the driveway, and from the small brick patio all that's visible is the mountian valley, forest land, and far below is the river.
Every time I'm there and see it and look at the sky I think about jumping, and I think that if I did jump, I would fly.
The heat made me recall the term "blue blazes." Not a cloud, not a puff of air until evening, and then the mosquitos come hungry.
During the day, from the top of the hill, we could look out across the valley and see the air shimmering like gold with a million dragonflies just above the treetops. It's a bad time to be a mosquito. It's a great time to be a bluejay.
My Grandpa bought his 3 acres of steep rocky hillside for $3,000 cash in 1968. He spent 30 years building his house. He blasted 100 feet into the side of the hill and that's the basement. A big boulder juts into the basement, supports the shelf where they keep all the fruit and vegetables they can. He used the rock that was blasted out to build the walls of the house, which are all about 4 feet thick. He bought for a song the lumber from an old mill that was demolished, sanded it down, framed his house with 10 by 12 inch beams, each one hand cut and measured for a perfect fit. The top of the roof is fifty feet above the driveway. It looks like a big stone castle. There are stone and brick steps leading up to the front door, which is about ten feet above the driveway, and from the small brick patio all that's visible is the mountian valley, forest land, and far below is the river.
Every time I'm there and see it and look at the sky I think about jumping, and I think that if I did jump, I would fly.
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