Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
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Category: Neighborhood
Broken Water Main
Posted on March 20, 2014 in Disasters Neighborhood
The street was slick as if we’d had a good rain. The closer we drew to our light at the crest where Saddleback Ranch and Glenn Ranch met, the wetter the road. It was flooding near the top. A pair of police cruisers hedged off the road. In the darkness, I could see a blue-white geyser shooting into the air in a steady torrent. A firetruck stood at the ready. At the other end, more police cars blocked off the road. We splashed past our usual turn and made a left at El Toro. Lynn and I schemed about what we would do if our water was cut off by the burst. “The only water we’ll use is for drinking and flushing the toilet,” she said. “I have Gatorade on hand,” I added helpfully. When we got home, we turned on the kitchen tap expecting it to scream as empty plumbing does. But a stream bubbled into a glass and I drank it.
Herd
Posted on October 14, 2013 in Creatures Hiking Neighborhood Prose Arcana
Seven mule deer gathered near the dead end of the trail.
Mountain Lions in Whiting Again
Posted on July 17, 2012 in Mountain Lions Neighborhood
Though I told my Facebook users that I feared the worst for the lion, Fish and Game seems to be following a So-you-wanna-be-around-humans-we’ll-let-you-live-around-humans” policy and sending it to a zoo.
A Ragged Shape
Posted on June 30, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder Neighborhood
One of those things that worry me flitted into consciousness the other night. Lynn had just turned off of Saddleback Ranch Road onto Ridgeline when I spied it off to the left: a dark gray-brown form, ragged at the edges and possessing four legs. It looked to me that Lynn was about to hit it so I cried out. She stopped about ten feet past the beast. I looked back. No creature, no bloody tracks where the car had dragged a dead body. Just the parked cars on our right.
Had I seen something or was it one of my hallucinations?
“Did you see it? Did you see it?” I repeated to Lynn.
“No,” she said. “But just because I didn’t doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.”
I held my silence as she made the left toward our home. What was it? I thought “cat” at the glance. “Raccoon” or “skunk” could also have fit the outline. What worried me most was the possibility that my anti-psychotic had stopped working. I didn’t need to suffer a relapse into the strange world of the seen but nonexistent.
I hope that somewhere out there, there is a cat or a raccoon or a skunk that has been scared into a lesson.
It Moved Like a Cat
Posted on June 8, 2011 in Creatures Neighborhood
There’s something out there,” he said. “A cat.” He held out his arms to show how big it was. “I didn’t see what it was, but it was this big and it moved like a cat.”
Dead Skunk and Turkey Vultures
Posted on May 26, 2011 in Creatures Driving Neighborhood
Two black bundles of feathers swaggered along the curb on Ridgeline Road. The turkey vultures held their scarlet heads even with the horizontal tilt of their tails. As we passed, they abandoned their carcass and flew into the trees. The brash, bitter scent of their prey — a skunk — blinded the nostrils.
Three hours after sunset ended the scavenging, the odor climbed the hill and barged in beneath the crack of the door.
Passing of the Purple Plum
Posted on August 5, 2010 in Neighborhood
Long time readers of this blog remember my long antagonism with the tree in front of my condo, the dreadful purple plum. The tree savagely bore down on my head when I passed on the sidewalk and obstructed my view from the deck ever since we moved in 1999. No edible fruit grew on it. It splattered the concrete with its progeny. On the other hand, it brought me moments of profound intensity:
Tonight, beneath the white blossoms of a purple plum tree and an electric lamp which hummed away the silence, I stood. Not a very interesting story to tell, but the moment was thick with the immediate presence of the night and the white corners of the condos.
It never did well due to its place in the shadows. But this season the plum had been struggling. No flowers sprang from its branches. Only a few deeply colored leaves stuck to its whiplike branches. Where its confederates flourished, my nemesis exuded mere weak fingernails of life.
Yesterday when I went out to take Doggy to the park, I hurried along the sidewalk. Turning my eyes to the left to set my eyes for a second on the leaden grayness of the familiar trunk, I noticed an absence reaching down to a medallion of sawdust at my feet. The gardeners had taken down the purple plum. The object of my mocking interest had been cut down.
The Fires in Orange County
Posted on November 15, 2008 in Disasters Neighborhood
Things are not so interesting here as they were last year. The Orange County fires are on the other side of our mountain in the Santa Ana Canyon. We do have some light Santa Ana winds blowing, but they are northeasterlies which means we are well out of harm’s way. I stopped to watch the tops of the palm trees swing in a parking lot, but my nose and my eyes could not detect the slightest wisp of smoke. I can rest at ease knowing that all the land that might threaten us was burned over last year. This year Portola Hills is safe.
The best source for news is, again, The Orange County Register. We are also keeping our fingers crossed for the folks in Los Angeles County who are threatened by the fire in Sylmar. I have already heard of one Twitterer who learned that his house was lost in that blaze when he saw it burning on the TV news.
For my accounts of the Santiago Fire click here.
The White Blossoms
Posted on March 4, 2008 in Daily Life Neighborhood Prose Arcana
Tonight, beneath the white blossoms of a purple plum tree and an electric lamp which hummed away the silence, I stood. Not a very interesting story to tell, but the moment was thick with the immediate presence of the night and the white corners of the condos.
Coat Weather
Posted on March 3, 2008 in Neighborhood Santiago Fire
Rabbits have begun to appear in the coyote brush that fringes Portola Hills. I saw three on a short walk around Concourse Park in the fog yesterday. In the spring, they will breed more, and then the offspring will discover that the burnt-out district is quite free of predators. So this year will be a good year for rabbits, at least until the bobcats, the coyotes, and the hawks find places to hide or to perch.
It was foggy until this morning. The hills are bright green where the grass is coming back, a pale green where they were sprayed with a hydroseeding compound, and brown in the places where neither Nature nor Humankind made provision. People still come to gawk: on my Saturday afternoon walk in the park I saw a cluster of tourists led by a man who was pointing. The rabbits paid them no heed. I just hurried home, holding my coat close.
High winds made it coat weather even with the sun.
Webcam in my Neighborhood
Posted on December 4, 2007 in Neighborhood Santiago Fire The Orange
The USGS just launched a new webcam which is positioned about a mile from where I live in Santiago Canyon as a means of monitoring post-fire floods. It should be quite the thing to watch on Thursday Friday.
Wouldn’t it be fun to stand in front of the camera for a picture?
Read more about it here.
[tags]disasters, groundwater, water, California, Southern California, California wildfires, wildfires, flood[/tags]
