Changes

 We are not dry yet, not yet where we should be at this time of year. We're not dry yet, but we are getting there. Slowly but surely, the scale is tilting that way now. Little by little the changes Out There are presenting themselves. I suppose it is that constant flux that keeps the multiple rides each week from becoming staid. Every time I ride Out There is like the first time.

Change can be something as small as a ladybug's showy red carapace with its black spots against an all green backdrop of sage, or that low-growing stuff in the middle of the road, usually purple-flowering, but all dried up now. It can be the appearance of a new riffle in the creek where one didn't exist before. Heck, water flowing at this time of year is itself an oddity, something not normally experienced. Speaking of which, the sound of flowing water reached my ears after descending the Buckwheat Trail the other day; there is still a small brook bubbling through the willow thicket, but where the water is coming from I have no clue. A little further on, the trail becomes covered with driftwood litter, left over from the pooling water of the vernal ponds. Taking a moment to toss some of the obstruction aside, it will be nice to add that segment back into the evening ride for a couple months. Change can also be the lack of sound where crashing water was just a week in the past. Though several of the smaller stream courses wending through the wash still bubble along, the spigot for some of the larger ones has been turned of. Even the cascades in the main diversion channel are less tremulous than they had been. Blooms come and go with regularity. That creekside pink-flowering small tree / large shrub is new, or at least is newly in bloom, it wasn't the last time I checked. It seems to be one of a kind; who knows where it came from. The steady progression of blooming continues unabated; like climbing a ladder might bring slightly different views at each rung, the plants of the Out There bloom on slightly different schedules throughout the year.

I ride past collected piles of rusty metal bits so often that I try to remember what they looked like last week - is that a new addition? A blue painted rock stands out, but the graffiti is unwelcome so I stop and turn one boulder over; now someones mark is in the ground, unseen. We don't need that sh*t out here, not in the Out There. I suppose most riders don't notice these, and other, things out there. Most seem to be more intent on squeezing another second or so from some previous best time, and anything that does not directly relate to that is inconsequential or irrelevant. They won't know what they are missing, because they won't see it to begin with.