Morning Walk

In the chaparral after a rain...

One of the nice things about being unemployed and living in the chaparral country of San Diego County is that I'm now completely free to take walks in the morning. With Debi and our two dogs (Mo'i and Lea), I've been walking every morning in the hills that surround our home.

This morning was even grander than usual. We had some rain last night -- not a whole lot, but enough to wash all the dust from the leaves of the chaparral, and to accent all the lovely high desert morning smells. The freshly cleaned leaves gave a new, dark green appearance to our hillsides. The smells of high desert chaparral are hard to put into words. The dominant small is from sage; the same sage that's commonly used as a spice. It's always the strongest at night and in the early morning; after a rainfall it is at the absolute peak -- strong and sharp in your nostrils. Along with the sage, there are dozens of odiferous nuances as you walk along; some from the leaves (like sage), others from flowers or stems that you crush as you walk. It's a veritable symphony of smell in the early morning after a rain, and that symphony is playing very loudly. The intensity of this desert perfume has to be experienced to be believed...

Something interesting about these smells -- nearly all of them serve a distinct purpose for the plant, usually either an insect repellant or an outright insecticide. The sharp odor of sage, for instance, is from a chemical that is quite an effective insect repellent -- even appearing in commercial products for use by people, and commonly planted in gardens to ward off bugs. Strange, somehow, to think that these things that we find so attractive are either obnoxious or fatal to insects!