We got up early, and kept working from six thirty to twelve thirty. We put a few last items in the moving container, tied the canoe on the car, did some more last minute cleaning, loaded up the car, argued about little things, did a walk-through of the house with Kathy the cemetery superintendent and Joe from the cemetery’s board of trustees. The truck came by at about 9:30 to pick up the moving containers — what a relief that was. The car was packed by noon. It was a “Spare the Air” day, and the smog was unpleasant. We were ready to go.
Thank goodness it was a holiday, the new federal holiday to commemorate Juneteenth. A holiday reduced the traffic from intensely unpleasant to merely horrible. We drove out through the inner Coast Range and into the Central Valley. We stopped at Dixon Fruit Stand, but they had mediocre fruit and durly clerks. We kept driving. Just past Davis, I said, “Let’s get off at Yolo Bypass.” “Where?” said Carol. “Right here, this exit,” I said. Carol zipped off the freeway at the last minute, saying she was willing to do something I wanted to do; meaning I should be nice to her when there was something she wanted to do later in the trip.
We drove to Parking Lot B, three quarters of a mile into Yolo Bypass Wildlife Management Area. Carol stayed in the car to take care of some business on her phone. I got out into the Central Valley heat, into the intense sunlight. I walked down a road. Yellow Star Thistle (Centaurea solstitialis) lined the road, but just a yard or two from the road, there was a band of tall Bisnaga (Visnaga daucoides), the white umbrels of flowers waving above the feathery green foliage. Beyond that, bulrushes (Schoenoplectus sp.?) grew where the road dropped off into marshlands. Off to my right, green rice fields stretched into the distance. A large flock of White-faced Ibis circled overhead, then settled into the rice fields.
After this stop, I felt different. I felt sane. Packing up and emptying out the house had felt strange, not completely moored in reality. The first two hours driving in the car still felt a little detached from reality. But the brilliant sunlight, the flowers, the pollinators, the birds, the jackrabbit loping lazily across the road — it felt like I was reconnecting with reality.
While I was photographing a flower, a man pulled up in his car, and spoke through the open window. “Um, I was just curious what you’re doing there. Not that you have to tell me, but…”
“Do you know this social media app iNaturalist?” I said. He didn’t. I explained that you could take a photo of a plant or animal, upload it, and get an identification. “I got into flowers recently,” I said, “and that’s how I’m learning them.” He asked me a few questions, then got ready to move on. “I’m Thomas, by the way,” he said. I introduced myself, then he drove off.
I walked slowly back to the car. Carol got out to take a short walk with me, but we agreed it was too hot, so we started riving again.
We stopped again at the Donner Pass rest area, and walked the little half mile loop next to the parking lot. It was already summer in the Central Valley, but it was still spring in the High Sierras. I saw a manzanita (Arctostaphylos sp.) still in bloom. We came to a small pond, and on the opposite shore there was still some unmelted snow.
Then down the eastern slope of the Sierras into Nevada. Now we were in the dramatic landscape of the Great Basin. I noticed the canoe on top of the car cast an odd shadow as we drove.
As sublime and awe-inspiring as the landscape was, it had been permanently marked by humankind. The philosopher Martin Heidegger, Nazi sympathizer though he was, had a useful insight with his concept of “Enframing”: part of the logic of modern human technology is to exclude all other ways of thinking about the world.
That sublime Nevada landscape is completely surveyed, marked out with roads and power lines, dotted with trash and effluvia; the habitats of plants and territories of birds must fit into the interstices of that human framework.
We drove on under the awe-full evening sky, and checked into our motel in Fernley, Nev.
