It being nearly April again, I thought I’d post something I wrote last April that I just found in my notebook.
In Davis in April in this dry valley almost too big to be called a valley created by an inland sea flooded year after year by the Sacramento River by the American River by the Yuba River by Putah Creek the soil enriched over the centuries by silt these carried from the high mountains of the Sierra from the crumbling mountains of the coastal range from the hilly unknown lands to the north, in this dry valley I sit, and breathe.
I breathe the rich dry eair of Yolo County, full like soil of decaying plant matter of dung of carcasses, all these returned to dust and settled into soil, and sometimes blown in gusts to enrich this air. I sit on a lawn a large and well-kempt lawn of the university which nevertheless is populated by a large variety of weeds, is strewn with oak leaves like the innumerable stars that can be seen from mountain-tops. In a season these leaves will be dust and soil and compost, their ancient life force slowly absorbed by the roots of plants.
I sit under a cork-oak whose leaves are falling (it may be sick) and who provides me with a delicious shade on this warm April day, mixed deliciously with patches of sunshine. The clouds too conspire to bring my life these ingredients, lazy flocks of cumulus humilis slowly floating eastwards from the sea perhaps to bring the high Sierras another dusting of snow. It has been a dry Winter but not utterly devoid of water, and the reservoirs are middling full. Spring has come unhindered, and Davis is full of butterflies now though bees are few this year.
I love this air that smells of compost. I love to walk in the sun and in the shade in Davis in the springtime. I love the university with its many workers and many students, and its many seekers of truth, or money. Out of this good soil has been cultivated a great campus of learning and employ, by the grace of God. Here has sprung up a community of people around the campus, and the old Davis needs all this too to survive — we all must love each other truly here in this earth, while we breathe the rich air, while we walk in the sun-soaked pathways of the university at Davis.