Thoughts and consequences of a Catalina rain event
It is late January. I’m sitting in my dry and warm office, seeing the first (and probably only) rays of sun in the last few days hit the soaked ground, thinking “there are actually shadows out there.” As I’m about to finish typing that sentence, the sun goes once more behind the clouds that blanket the skies, in preparation for the still-to-come rain. We’ve been somewhat isolated in the last few days. Much of the field work has stopped, due to unsafe road and trail conditions. The field crews were buffeted by the winds and spoke of icicle-cold rain poking at their faces. Everyone is doing work from home offices, writing proposals and reports, catching up.
I’ve spent about an hour each day pilfering satellite broadband from one of my employee’s homes. Satellite connections are the only ones that currently work. Our T-1 line, an old and decrepit copper line from town to Middle Ranch, has been pecked continuously by woodpeckers, searching perhaps for the imaginary insects they can hear or imagine are there from the humming noises this line produces. This is all really a wild guess on my part, because I have really no idea why a woodpecker would peck away at a rubber/plastic-coated copper line until the holes literally perforate the line through and through. Holes where you could stick a screwdriver through, I’ve been told by the technicians that maintain this line. I really don’t know what these holes do to the information during dry days. For all I know, the holes do nothing to the capabilities of the line. All I know is that our connection is relatively slow but reliable, until it rains. Then, water, with all of its conducting capabilities, gets into the lines and junction boxes (which also appear not to be water- or woodpecker-proof) and our connection to that great ethereal internet and e-mail goes away. Then, only the sun, the wind and a few strategically placed hairdryers can get us back to the world of the living-connected.
In the mean time, we visit and download, as best we can (without much graphics or large attachments, and definitely no surfing) our e-mails and most important messages. At least we have phones to follow up on things.
Trying to do some work at someone elses’ home with a three-year-old and a jumpy dog has its challenges. Usually our visits are for fun and games, dinner, music or other social activities. Work visits are different. “Hi! Can you play a game with me?” “Oh not now, sweetie. I’m working.” “Why?” “Because…” What could be more important than work to a three-year old?…I give up. The three-year-old needs to be occupied so she doesn’t distract the work. A good PBS science show usually does the trick, accompanied by fruit and cereal snacks and a warm and cozy blanket. Periodically my eyes drift in her direction, witnessing the laser-focus nature of her attention to the program, head rock-steady, eyes centered on the characters dancing and acting on the projection screen while her body contorts, walks, twists and even dances to the program’s rhythms in ways that seem unnatural to anyone but an experienced yogi or perhaps…a three-year-old. The dog is another thing.
Now I sit at the dinner table, typing away and I hear a sound that makes me think of a broken washing machine. Whoump! Whoump! What the heck? I look up towards the laundry area, nothing happening there, and then pinpoint the sound to…under me! I look closer and the dog is lying down at my feet, his body jerking in sync with the Whoump! Whoump! Until it goes Whouaaack! I lift my socked feet in time to avoid a large, slimy lump of partially-chewed dog food, which was followed by a second one after the now peremptory Whouaaaack! Clean up crews (mom) appear out of nowhere with paper towels and I think, “Phew! Close call.” Then, back to the e-mails, the responses, the phone calls (yes, I was tracked down), and the sense that I can’t get much done by moving back and forth from the office to my house to someone else’s house, jumping over puddles, slipping and sliding in the soft muddy ground, avoiding streams of runoff, and finding out why cheap umbrellas and Goodwill raincoats are really not good investments, no matter how cheap they were. Repeat the routine in the evening and next morning until the rains go away, the ATT crews get their trucks and hairdryers back to the hills, and the normal working environment can resume.
On the other hand…There are benefits to the rain. Traffic across the ranch has wound down to a bare minimum. Boats are not running in or out of the Island, nor are the barges and barely a helicopter takes flight. All secondary roads are off limits. Some primary roads have suffered rock slides, downed trees and branches and mud flows, so traffic is even less than normal. School is closed; there’s no Coop, no rural mail delivery (our wooden box-on-stilts in the middle of nowhere with a red flag for “mail in” and a green flag for “mail out”); most of my staff is working from other locations, so the office is quiet. Outside, the rains seem to have awakened appetites and activities. The hummingbirds look radiant in their early spring feathers, brightly iridescent even in the indirect light. I can’t imagine how vivid they’ll be once the sun is out again. Coveys of dozens of quail are busily sifting through the drifts for accumulated seeds and other goodies, moving fast like extras in a silent movie, scampering and taking flight at the slightness disturbance, real or imaginary. The horses at the Saddle Club huddle under their shelters or frolic in the mud pebbles, sliding and bucking in exuberant glee. The pounding rain and the driving winds have washed away every trace of dust on the vegetation, cars and buildings. Everything sparks out there; even our old worn-to-the-chassis vehicles look better. The ravens look huge, all puffed out, a bluish sheen to their black feathers. Mushrooms took their cue and are popping out of the ground like colorful blisters, yellow, orange, creamy white. Green is everywhere, in the mantle of annual grasses, in the sheen of trees and shrubs, in the light greens of cacti, contrasted by the grays and blues of the sages and the reddish browns of the exposed soils. The Catalina palette, its paint and colors fresh from the tube, has been renewed by the short annual life-giving waters of the Southern California semi-arid climate.
So we wait for the rains to go through, conflicted by the mixed feelings, wanting them to go on for a long time, refilling the reservoirs and waterholes, swelling the streams with current and life, soaking deep into the soils bringing life-giving water and nutrients to the shrubby vegetation, replenishing the fragile aquifer, washing away the accumulated flotsam of our activities. But we also want them to stop, to give us back control of our lives, allow us to get connected again, physically and electronically, letting us to travel off and across the Island when we want to. We resent somewhat the fact that nature still has a say in what we do and not do, but at the same time, we enjoy the relative solitude and the great excuse it gives us to slow down, even stop, and observe, listen, smell and feel the forces that drive the life processes on this Island, this region and the planet. Rain, rain, go away. Keep on coming, another day, and another one, again and again.
Carlos
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