Silverado Canyon

Posted on July 27, 2002 in The Orange

Summer is the season of death in Southern California, when the greasewood and the sage rusts and the sun blanches the grass. Streams run dry. You can dig deeply into their beds and you won’t find even a hint of water. The shady places are mottled and the cool they grant is insubstantial. Leaves pop off alder boughs and amble to the earth. Some trees, like the buckeye, drop all their leaves, as if they realize the folly of a verdant display in this heat. A light haze denies you the keen view you think is your right when the sun sits high in the sky. At mid day you see no birds and no animals. When there is sound, it’s that of internal combustion engines making motion out of long dead plants.