Yesterday morning I did see
— With apologies to Alan Jay Lerner
Berries on the toyon tree
I took a breath and thought, could it be?
It’s green-up time! Then I began to look around; and in every field I found
Greens were a-pushin’ up through the ground
For green-up time!
The old road, already a wildlife corridor, also now apparently functions as a watercourse, wearing in a natural gutter along the inside of the north-facing canyon wall. For months in the rainy season this spot must never get full sun, and must always remain cool and moist. The air, my God, so fresh, so clean. The scene, so green.
One fascinating organism looks like salt-and-pepper fried eggs, dripping down the rock. A party of them seems at one point to have led themselves out of the mainstream, as if by a God-given manifest destiny. It grows and grows, until it reaches the end of its rock, finis terra, below which is transient sandy creek bottom. Thwarted? Or; maybe it is the other way around: maybe it crawled up from the creek, to the lip of the rock, and is making a run for the wet corner. I feel dumb before this beautiful sight, motion on a level I can scarcely fathom.
The Valley Village View 