I especially have no faith in the DA’s office which would let
a
32-year-old teacher, Albert Vicuna, force sex on a 14-year-old
child in spite of her verbal objections, and only award him a
one-year sentence in county jail.
My husband and I took our dog Zay on our short hike Sunday afternoon: 1.1 miles up Sprig Lake Trail to the big rock, and back down again. We were prepared for our long hike: a 5-mile loop that starts and ends at the same parking lot, but the day was drizzly, and the higher we climbed, the harder the rain got. Some of the precipitation was doubtless due to the redwoods we were hiking through.
Redwoods need a lot of water to survive. Redwood needles comb water out of the fog, condense it, and drip it down to their root zones. That is why the territory of Sequoia sempervirens is tied to the California coastal fogbelt: there is warmth enough and fog enough to allow them to survive our summer drought. But as we neared the rock the rain was harder under the tanoaks and even in the open.
Even though the day was warm, unlike our typical California drizzle, we had had enough exercise and enjoyed enough nature for one day. It was a beautiful hike. The redwood sorrel bloom is almost over, but the columbines are out: orange-red, spiky bells swaying on long, fairy-like stems. The wild roses are blooming too, and here and there you can spot wild irises, some purple, some cream-colored.
I kept my eyes on the trail, because the warmth and wet seemed perfect conditions for banana slugs and California newts. Alas, we saw no banana slugs. But because my eyes were fixed on the trail, I avoided stepping on the first earthworm we passed. And the second. And the third, fourth and fifth, closely clustered … and the 20th through 28th … I gave up counting at 150, but saw at least as many again before we got to the rock. It was a mass migration of earthworms.
Most were very sensibly going from one side to another on the trail, but some stubbornly insisted on traversing the trail lengthwise, ignoring the booted blundering humans and dogs that imperiled their passage. Stuart and I had never seen anything like it. (Zay, being blind, still hasn’t.) Naturally, we speculated on the reason. We noticed that the worms were present when the trail was clay or trickling water. They were absent when the trail was deep in spongy humus.
My hypothesis is that the ground was saturated in many places, and the earthworms were taking to the surface to avoid being drowned. Some of them were undoubtedly meeting other fates in the open. I think I managed to avoid stepping on any, but there were other hikers on the trail, as well as two newts, moving briskly with rounded bellies and a satisfied air.
Furthermore, I think, based on what I saw of the trail, that in many places the ground is in what geologists call an effluent condition: so full of groundwater that it is oozing water instead of soaking it up. This is unusual in May. Usually, by May the creeks are subsiding. By June, Uvas frequently stops running. Last weekend’s prolonged drizzle brought us 1.34 additional inches of rainfall, as measured at Coyote Reservoir. That puts us within spitting distance of 17 inches for the season, 85 percent of season normal. Uvas Reservoir is 99 percent full. The county reservoirs, considered collectively, are 88 percent full.
Folks, this is not a drought. If I had any faith at all in the good sense and rationality of government, I would expect them to stop thinking about mandatory water rationing for the year. Alas, I have none. I have no faith in the water district which has grown exponentially in size and budget, while our population only doubled. I have no faith in the school district, when it places its director of business services on paid administrative leave with her $161,554 salary, when the director’s error has resulted in the district missing $6 million in tax revenue for the next year. I especially have no faith in the DA’s office which would let a 32-year-old teacher, Albert Vicuna, force sex on a 14-year-old child in spite of her verbal objections, and only award him a one-year-sentence in county jail. No sense, no service, no justice.
Cynthia Anne Walker is a mother of three, a mathematics teacher and a former engineer. She is a published, independent author. Her column appears each Friday.
