The heat continues to rage, as do wildfires in California, including a dozen large ones just a hundred miles south of us. Whatever combination of nature’s alchemy that is at work right now has caused the Black Drake hatch to explode. The sky swarms with them for 20 hours each day. They swirl sunward, hundreds of feet high. The benign yet pesty inch-long mayflies have plastered the sides of the cabin, the door must be swept off before entering, they are piling up inches thick in the window gutters, as it is impossible to keep them out of the house. The river is turgid with silt from upstream cattle, and spawning drakes. There is a mirror river of dead and dying flies atop the greasy water and in the eddies, the drake islands–huge mats of dead, collecting mayflies–are gathering, piling up, rotting, stinking. And did I mention the mosquitoes are still buzzing about. They have certainly quieted down a bit but if you try to get away from the river and riparian area to free yourself of the Black Drakes by heading into the forest, the mosquitoes are waiting to turn you back. The pine pollen has taken flight and the air is dense with the gyrating mating of yellow sperm winging toward the plump, ripe beckoning of ponderosas and lodgepoles virgin to the spore. A bright yellow-green powder paints every available surface, be it a tree or not, so keeping the house dusted is moot. It has been more than a month now without any real rain. The sky spit up a few drops last night but only enough to leave the occasional pock in the dense, talc pumice dirt that loses its dust to the air whenever the hint of breeze courses past.  

 

The haze and humidity from the 90+ temps, and billowing thunderhead masses creates a perfect, sticky, canvas for all the heat, insects, smoke, dust, and pollen to create a messy soup in the thickening air. It has become impossible to keep clean since the river is our bath tub. My hair is stiff with the sky’s stew settled into it. The house is so filthy I just want to scream. It is too hot to be outside playing, exercising, gardening, working. It is too stuffy and unpleasant to stay in our tiny 16x 16 log cabin. Sleep is becoming hard to find, as is patience.

 

So, we escaped and are now settled in Bend at my friend, Loren’s, home. She’s in Montana for 10 days. Her house is made of thick, stucco walls and has concrete and rattan floors. It is cool most of the day and when it gets too hot, around 5 PM, we’ll go to a frigid air conditioned cafe for iced tea and beer, happy hour, conversations with friends. I’ll wear little sun dresses and nice sandles, silky clean blond hair brushed and bug/dust free for the first time in two weeks. We’ll take the dogs walking at the park with paved or graveled paths and poison and tarmac keeping the biting and pesky insects at bay. I’ll happily slip into city-girl mode for a while, until the call of the wild (and the death of wildfires, bugs, and sex filled skies) beckons me home.