Forces Of Nature

As regular readers of my occasional articles have probably realized by now, I find nature — in all its forms — fascinating. Maybe we lived closer to nature during my time in Anderson Valley from the late 1950s to the late 1980s because it often dictated daily life back then. Annual rainfall in Anderson Valley during that era — as noted in my September, 2012 Anderson Valley Advertiser article “If the Good Lord’s Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise” — was clearly more than today, and I think morning fog was more frequent and denser as well. One of the things that seems not to have changed — though it was late this year — is the June heat wave, which arrived like clockwork during the first three weeks of the month and lasted anywhere from two to four days, with daily high temperatures soaring to more than 100 degrees each day.