Season of the Dragon

Posted on September 20, 2002 in Disasters Life as Metaphor Neighborhood Prose Arcana Weather

A few weeks from now, the first drops of rain will pierce the hard-baked crust left over from summer and bathe the woody roots of the pallid scrub that clump along the sandstone spines and domes of Whiting Canyon like fresh hair implants on a stark scalp. Until then we expect the waning heat to suck the last film of moisture greasing the sinews of the chaparral. The cool nights that have already come will not suffice to protect us from what we must fear. Nor will the soft fogs which drizzle the sweat of the near ocean. We who live on this hill watch the heads of the live oak and the chaparral to see what tickles them and how hard. We sniff the air and watch for the winds that are named for a saint, Santa Ana — St. Anne, mother of the Holy Mother of God. But we who have witnessed the fire drakes wend their way through buckwheat patches prefer to fuse the syllables given the foehn into something more appropriate: We call them santana — the devil winds. The fodder is strewn on the hillside. All that is needed is a fool or a maniac to invoke the dragon who devours the hills.