Sense of Adventure

But you probably couldn’t tell it from the dearth of posts here, huh?

Mea culpa. I was way busy for a spell, writing like a mad thing. This was Good. Then this week I’ve been inexplicably under the weather - draggy, mentally unfocused, sleep habits more messed up than usual - without showing any overt symptoms (pain, bleeding from the eyes.) This was Not So Good.

Doing a bit better now. The tennis elbow on my left arm’s mostly cleared, which’ll help me exercise more and get some stuff done.

Anyway - yeah, got a lot written, and am building up momentum again. Went to a great Fourth of July party - there’s not much left to celebrate, but celebrating with friends is an end in itself, and probably an act of defiance.

Emma’s not been so pleased: she who fears loud bangs. These have at last subsided, at least the man-made ones. But now the season of thunder may be upon us. Tyke can’t catch a break, sometimes.

It’s easily been the coolest summer I can remember here. Fortunately it hasn’t gotten real humid, although over the last few weeks we’ve had skies cloud up and tease us with hopes of rain without delivering, at least down here in the Valley. Not to say it hasn’t rained really hard here a few times, but it’s more like once a week, every ten days - high precipitation for these parts, granted, but not the usual concentrated monsoon we tend to get sometime over the summer.

That’s until recently. Yesterday when I woke up (and not terribly early, I assure you) the humidity was higher than the temperature, Dang! That hardly happens even in midwinter when the temperatures are low. But at about 10:40 AM the WeatherScan channel showed the temperature at 66°, humidity 67%.

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That’s basically it.

We went out to walk the bike path and trail that follow the clear ditch that run past the RGNC. It was hot; I was hoping to beat the days’ worst heat by getting out and back before it peaked around 5-6. I reckoned without our high desert sun, which even when the air is cold can heat you up pretty quickly.

Emma usually goes into the ditch right before we head onto the bridge that leads from the Nature Center gate to the bike path on the levee. There’s a notch in the bank there which makes it convenient to get to the water. Today was no exception: she piled right in, slurped up some water, then walked a few feet back along the bank and for some reason nosed back toward it.

As she reached the bank here came this frog out of the grass, flying high in the air. Cleared Emma like Evel Knievel jumping a schoolbus lengthwise, plopped into the water behind her, and was seen no more.

Not sure what kind of frog it was. I’m familiar with leopard frogs and bullfrogs. This one, like the others I’ve been seeing around the ditches lately, looked dark for a leopard. Whereas I’m used to bullfrogs looking like, to be blunt, extra-thick cowflops with eyes, and this frog was definitely not in that size class. Then again, logically even bullfrogs must go through some kind of intermediate state between cure little tadpole and Big Fat Wad. Rather like the rest of us.

Anyway, Emma seemed to be the least startled of all of us. I was certainly taken by surprise. And for the frog, not happening to notice the splashing, utterly overt approach of a big black predator certainly constituted an Awareness Fail.

Oh - happy Fourth of July, everybody. I suppose it’s a good time to remember, nostalgically, the freedoms we’ve lost.