May 2024: a fragment

Chapter 1 Weeds and Clouds: A year on the prairie

Every season on this prairie I call home has its own remarkable beauty, even if that beauty is stark and inhospitable. In the midst of the pandemic, we had a terrible drought. The fear of fire was made even more real when we were engulfed with smoke from the California wildfires, ash floating, fragments of lives in Santa Rosa settled over our sunshine. The muted skies and hot wind added to the dystopian feel of our lives that summer. Our parched prairie with it’s tender grasses and weeds dormant and thirsty cloaked in the smoke was a beautiful reminder of the fragility of this landscape and how easily it could swept away from us with a spark that turns into a flame.