I think most of us also feel like that’s the day summer begins.
So the ice broke and summer began this past Friday. Though it turns out lnhammer and I were a mile away (vertically speaking) camping on Mount Lemmon at the time. We hiked the Marshall Gulch-Aspen Loop again. Remember those aspen saplings? They were still there, but the leaves had grown to full-fledged aspen leaves, that quaked in the wind the way aspens do. And bracken–bright green bracken had unfurled everywhere, carpeting the brown and gray slopes, bringing bright color to the ground beneath the dead trees.
Everything was green, in camp and on trail both. Wildfires really don’t kill forests. They transform them, but the forest itself is still very much alive, and very much committed to the business of growing.
Back here, the air is hot and dry and still well over 100. Not much wind now, but when it blows, it will be a dragon’s breath against our skin.
Part of me believes that until you’ve stood beneath the dragon’s breath, you don’t really quite belong in (or to?) the desert yet.