Sundays

Today they are picking in our orchard again. There are people milling around and dust is drifting around the oak trees. Huge tractors are pulling bushels and bushels of cherries out of the trees. The wind is moderate and is making the orchard go shushshsh.

There are times that the birds sound louder than usual. Their songs pierce our house’s walls and even Rufus’s ears perk up at the shrill cacophony. Most of the time you see the birds flutter around tree to tree, flower to flower, branch to branch, but these aren’t the ones singing. The ones singing are hardly ever seen.

The fourth of July was surreal and psychedelic. We look east across the eastern part of the town from a hillside. There were colorful explosions all over. You would see a bright display of colorful fire and then a second or two later a boom. The sounds of fireworks still put me on edge. Rufus seemed unbothered this year, maybe we were far enough away this time. As the sunset and the sky darken, you could see more clearly the fireworks blossoming over the town, but you can also see a bright orange moon rise over the hill. It was a partial eclipse, but most people were blowing things up to notice.

We noticed baby quail a little more than a month back, but now they are only slightly smaller and greyer than their parents. The quail know more about chaos than most animals. They don’t run in straight lines, nor do they fly gracefully and quietly, but zig-zagging flap flap jumps. Rufus is confused by them but wants to learn.

The neighbors got a dog. It is a black and white little guy named Richie. The owners told Nicole he is a Samoyed, but it looks more Havanese to me. Sometimes he yelps and Rufus looks down at him with concern.

Nicole and I walked Rufus through the cherry orchard at dusk yesterday. To the west was an orange sky as the eastern sky turned a bluish purple. The river could be seen reflecting the sky as it snaked through the gorge. We sampled the cherries as we walked through the rows. The trees were hanging low and the grass was tall and green. Some of the cherries were sweet, some were tart, and some were just sticky and a little sweet or tart. Some were black, some were dark red, and the others were yellow. It is so peaceful to walk through the trees. The air was more still then, and there is still a cooler air sitting around us in the evening.

I still don’t miss the city that much. Even with seeing some of my neighbors’ true beliefs, I still don’t want to leave the peaceful quiet hillside. I miss my friends and family, but the setting isn’t what I miss. I grew up in Portland. I joked about dying in Portland. Now I think about elsewhere instead of just going back. I miss the ocean. I miss the mossy filled wet woods on the west side of the mountains and the coastal range. I sometimes don’t want to live in the United States at all.

My friend and his wife visited me today. They had gone and stayed in Cottonwood Canyon and were heading back to Portland. We sat on the porch and drank coffee and caught up. It was nice. I do miss the conversations with a lot of people in Portland that just can’t happen over a computer monitor. Rufus kept wanting to visit the workers down the hill eating their lunches.

I had a dream that a Great Blue Heron was eating the surface of a river and where it had bit blood began to flow. The bird’s eyes were glowing orange and red like a demon, and there were other red glowing eyes in the dark silhouette of trees on the river bank. It also sounded like cicadas mixed with violins being dragged across saws. I woke up to a sliver of light peeking under the blinds. I felt panicked. I wish I could sleep till night.

The quails like to hang out by our outdoor altar. They sometimes perch on the elk jawbone that sits on top of the altar. They like it there. They stand around while their plumes wobble.