Today is Wednesday, my regular posting day, June 3, 2026. Scheduled in eight hours was 728. Covers, promised last week.

Something timely has come up to shove it and the next few posts down the pipeline by a week. Two things actually, one benign and fun, the other a bit jarring.

I live in the foothills of the Sierras, at about the thousand foot elevation. It is the level that they call the heat zone. I once heard another resident say that where we live, even the rattlesnakes carry canteens. We moved here decades ago to get out of the crowded central valley.

It rains about twelve inches during the winter. Everything is green and lush while the Eastern states are under snow, but from May until October there is no rain. Not a drop. The grasses go brown-golden and crackle in the sun, like tinder.

We came here for the space and the wildlife. Buzzards circle every day. They are quite beautiful, since their odd red heads are hidden by altitude. Occasionally there are bald eagles circling with them, and often red tail hawks, crows, and geese.

On the ground, there are wild turkeys. A few years ago a flock came frequently to our place, to loll beneath the shade trees in the heat of summer. One year an injured adult stayed on our property all summer, recuperating, then disappeared in the fall.

Recently, turkeys have been scarce at our place, but a few days ago a new flock, three adults and about a dozen babies, started coming through. We’ve missed having a personal flock of turkeys.

That is the benign and fun thing. The other is fire — not benign and not fun.

Every summer there are fires, often large, often close by, sometimes on our doorstep. Yesterday, it happened again, and once again we dodged the bullet.

About two in the afternoon, I heard aircraft flying low overhead, and the phone rang with an evacuation alert. We jumped into the car, to be ready for a quick retreat. From the end of the driveway we could see a black cloud of smoke on the next road over. We drove around the twisting roads to visually triangulate the center, pulling off from time to time to let fire crews go by.

It was a small fire by California standards, but just the kind that can spread devastation measured in square miles if allowed to grow. There was a small spotter plane circling high overhead, a helicopter shuttling back and forth to a nearby lake to drop hundreds of gallons of water onto the fire and a larger plane divebombing loads of fire retardant between the flames and nearby houses. The retardant plane is what you see in the photo above.

That’s where I live — full of wildlife, beautiful, dangerous, and often quite lively. When I finish this post, I’ll drive over to see the details. All the roads into the area were closed off by fire crews yesterday.

As nearly as I can tell from Google Maps, the fire was about a half mile away.