in 2017, following a trip through Southeast Asia I was in my hometown again. it was the best part of the year and the best event to celebrate: The Great Blue Heron Music Festival on July 4th weekend. I leaned back in a campsite chair by the fire and marveled at the comparatively small bunches of leaves throughout the layered and sundry greens of temperate forest canopy. I had been in the tropics for months amidst towering jungle trees with leaves the size of my own trunk (torso, not rear). under similarly reaching stalks in an equally dense forest I was newly struck by the quality of daylight through translucent and quivering swatches of greens. recently I have been living in the high desert among junipers and scrub oak and prey animals. I haven’t been to my hometown in years, much less again at a glorious summer high. my current home in aridity has trees I can climb and lots of rocks. the greens of my youth are viciously vibrant, as with the blues; I have genuinely had to readjust. the trees with the little leaves these days loom like monsters so impressively tall. Deets is in joyful, playful confusion. she spent much of today watching chipmunks, and tonight we’ll sleep in a tent. throughout this trip I have been repeatedly overcome by awe at Deets’ adaptability, amid car rides, new spaces, strange sounds and new faces, fresh smells and wet grasses, trees with unclimbable trunks and no tops… what can’t this kitty do?!?

At one point I came out of the house to see my dad standing at the edge of the deck dangling a string over the side. and then Deets’ fat fluffy little paw swiped from her hideout.