Gravel Lot Reverie

Gravel lot, with cat, in California’s Central Valley [photo by author]

We pulled off at that exit because we saw a grocery store sign from the freeway. Our destination was still hours away and we wanted to have a beer when we arrived, but by that time the stores would be closed. So it was a practical thing.

I’ve been to quite a few, but not nearly all, of the exits off the 5 in the Central Valley but never this one. I had no memory of visiting this particular grocery store chain anywhere between Sacto and the Oregon border.

I’d been driving since leaving Ashland in mid-afternoon and the sun had just sunk behind the coast range here. The sky was lit up with a dusty orange glow. The summer was slowly waning from its peak as September approached and we were thankful there’d been no big fires yet. It felt like it was only a matter of time before everything burned — every last tree from Del Norte to Tahoe and from Klamath to Marin — but perhaps we’d be spared any record breakers this year.

That seems the most to hope for in these days of new highs, lows and days-in-a-row: that this month won’t be the hottest, wettest or deadliest every recorded; that some respite, however temporary, might be felt, if only for one’s nerves.

For, what is it to live in such times? When talk of “the end of the world” — in some sense or other — is no longer just crazy, like it was not so long ago?