It is not the end of the season

I spent a minute or two last night standing on my deck in the backyard feeling the breeze on my face. I imagined I was smelling the way it smells (pine, thin air full of pine smell) as you climb out of the foothills into the grano-diorite on Highway 50, and the way that smell intensifies as you push deeper into the Sierras. I imagined the air felt as thin as it does at 6500’, which when you live at sea level, is much thinner. The first day or so it can feel harder to breath.

But it is Labor Day weekend and I am home, in the Bay Area. Not in the Sierras on the hike that was meant to be the other slice of bread for the Alaska sandwich that was my summer, my season. And if I recall the trip that is the first slice of bread, the bread of this sandwich is officially shitty. But the filling was worth the trouble.