Clarkia and wind poppies, toyon, laurel sumac, a hollyleaf cherry the size of an oak tree. A yucca spur in my calf and the scent of purple sage lingering on my fingers like superglue.
I scramble and pant and fall along these ridges that are set to be graded down 80 feet, I soak my head in the stream water and it slides down my back like a june bug, prickly velvet.
I sit and listen to the hum of the bees blending in with the 210, a hybrid composition, an ever-present reminder of the asphalt and gasoline and tire tread future that is looming.
I scrub my palms clean on the ground, the craggy soil feels like a rug burn and I push harder, the pebbles and dust and twigs pressing into me until my skin holds their impression, does a memory count if it only lasts for a second?
I wish I could look at 800 acres of land and see it as empty space, waiting patiently, just passing time before its concrete metamorphosis. I wish I could walk this land and ignore the red-tailed hawks, the mariposa lilies, the mountain lion. I wish I could walk this land and instead only see 3-car garages and evening games of horse and charcoal smoke winding up the streets on the 4th of July. We talk about restoration, about repairing harm, about re-wilding - why not step back in time and prevent the harm before it has even happened?
I sit here in the shade of the chamise forest and feel desperate. I want to roll my body up and down every inch of this space, to feel it cutting into me, to find a way to steal it all, to make it material, its life becoming mine, I save it the only way I know how, I take its light, I take its light and I etch it into film and I pray that it will be enough, that these tiny re-creations will be looked at and loved enough to save the place they came from.
