Eilon, June 23, 2006
I can always look forward to winter after the solstice. Maybe I'm the only guy on the planet who thinks thusly when others are anticipating their great summer vacation. Strangely, the avocado season jumbles the seasonal concept because of the long irrigation season, an off-season harvest and what always seems to be a receding winter. That is, it sees me coming with reduced daylight hours, and barely perceptible cooler days [measured in evaporation levels and tree transpiration rates]. Here comes Barry, grasping a yard of dangling irrigation piping as if to ward off encroaching spirits; the jackal sprites and their mischievous diversions. The pewter colored cumulus clouds quickly vanish beyond Rainbow Arch, back to Europe, as it were, or held up, like the lightning nights seen over the inky Mediterranean in latter October; a flashy intermittent nimbus within the interlacing folds of the Troodos mountains in Cyprus. Possibly relenting a little, the pipe unclenched, falls to the ground, a current of sea-borne air hesitantly wavers across the foot hills, at last dispelling summer's mid-day heavy shore side haze.
I can rejoice at all the tiny revelations that changing climate augers, conditionally if it means cooler weather. In the midst of our languor, fading into the heat of a rock strewn hillside, settled near the nettles and thorny burnet [Sarcopoterium Spinosum] near Beit Fariq, tormented by swarms of gnats in sere but shimmering air, that fluttered in an aimless mass in the midday heat until dispelled by the slightest breeze blowing through a ravine. We were relieved by the coinciding foaming of the first draft of late afternoon Turkish coffee.
This week I had my closest call with nature. As usual, kneeling repairing a gnashed pipe, my reverie substantially shaken by a sudden snort that sounded deep from between the trees to my rear. I turned and my practiced vision revealed nothing. I resumed my labors and turning to my left was encountered by one feral mother boar [Sus Scrofa], at about a distance of fifteen yards sounding a warning grunt and feinting two or three short steps in my direction.. The piglets scampered north behind her. They had trooped in the section below me, clambering above the partition between the two orchard sections. Fancy meeting me here, undoubtedly a prospect beyond their "wildest" dreams. I stood motionless, gangly and silent, no reason to reach for a pocket comb, or even to think of taking a portrait with my Nokia. It is amazing how calm I was, or appeared to be to the sow, who in an instant, could have pulverized me into strands of inviable neurons. Fortunately, neither of us clamored for a fight, and she strutted off to her litter and a probable nearby exit at the north fence.
Later in the day I observed a similar but less threatening outing. Just as I was driving by on my ATV, a covey of chukar partridge chicks had shambled out an orchard gate onto the asphalt. The hen, delinquent for just a few seconds, had stood behind her inquisitive brood out for their morning walk, and found herself behind one of the unopened gates. She skidded along the gate's lower lateral bar, but couldn't quite figure how to get through the wire mesh. There were her chicks, as plain as day, momentarily unreachable, skittering eastward toward the nearby school, [such enthusiasm]! as she sidled along the gate until she reached the opening!
No other heartwarming sitings, beside the garrulous plovers, called my attention, although a nonvenomous Syrian Black Snake slinked its way across my path by the head irrigation unit in Dalet. I sat observing on the ATV. In a brief exchange of views, a snake-like slow worm and a palm dove uncannily settled on the road. Once I rumbled into view, the slow-worm was slow to scramble beneath the orchard fence. The dove took flight. Love-Barry