Arrival

Big sagebrush in a field doesn’t just smell like turkey dinner, its got a whole lot more to it than that. When you twist it and crush it in your fingers and you bring it to your nose there’ll be something like eucalyptus, maybe some mint, the citrus of lemon balm. These aren’t faint scents either. They are as distinct as the day is long, and as much a part of the sagebrush as the sage itself, and the dryness that it grows in, and the snakes, and the rodents, even the insects moving through it’s particular and historical terrain. Every bit of the geography is a bit of the plant, it absorbs its surroundings like a sponge.

Today a helicopter circled and landed on one of the high plateaus of Parker Mountain across the valley from the building site, clouded skies the backdrop. Another helicopter flew low above a high shoulder on Lookout Mountain just above us, and flew back again. They were looking for something, maybe movement in the stock still forest or in the golden, desiccated hills of grass, maybe on the watch for a plume of smoke or a lick of the colour of orange or red. It’s still wildfire season, and the land is as parched as it ever has been. The dogs laid in the dirt, restless and staring at the traffic overhead, and snapped at every fly that buzzed near their heads. The cat wandered and disappeared into this new wilderness, into the maw of tall and desiccated grasses and it stayed hidden.

Tomorrow I will run again for the first time in a season. I’ll revisit those steps and the tap-tap-tap touch of the earth.