A BIT ABOUT THE LAND

Malaise dampened the affects of this sprawling mountainous ecology. As my depression passes, where I live has again become strikingly beautiful. I find myself nearly colliding with automobiles as I crane my neck to watch the massive hills literally roll upwards from a flattened landscape.

It has not rained in over five months. The sweeping green fields shifted to a golden pallor almost overnight and then it was all bland and tan. Despite the dessication, everything felt rigid.

Perhaps because it is so dehydrated, the landscape has shifted again. The grassy vegetation is now so delicate that it is more like beds of covered in millions of strands of amber glass. It does not fall, rot, perhaps because there’s not enough moisture to. Rather it stands firmly, but looks as if it might all shatter if you ran your hand through it.

Whatever moisture that remains is held firmly by deep rooted trees. These stocky and brambly leafed trees, their branches as thick and hard as steel, maintain color despite the utter lack of rainfall. The undulous hills are defined by their dusty greenery, which lights up from the blanket of amber beneath it.

There is a rusty red in perfect compliment with the ambrous undergrowth. The parched shrubbery which stretches across long ridges, or patches in enclaves in the otherwise impossibly steep hills, blots a perceptual mid-point from the amber to the dusty green and as such, these three colors: amber, dusty green, and rust red make up a sinuous palette.

I have never seen such a clear harmony of color.

The hills were once uniform in being soggy and green and those colors were so tenuous that I often remarked that the landscape looked much more diorama than terra firma. It’s strange for as striking as this was, I feel the peak of its dryness, when the climate could not become anymore violent to the propagation of life, is when it is at its most striking.