When the Almond Tree Blooms

Happy Holidays! I wanted to give a little update to all of you who’ve been reading my blog posts this fall. I’m going to drink some tea, write a little and listen to Drake’s Take Care . The album brings me back to the beginning of 2012, when I’d drive on I-5 into Sacramento, away from the loneliness of the rice farm where I worked to my unlikely haven, a financial accounting class at Sac City College. Winter Wheat at Sills Farms, January 2012 (I disced this field) I first started blogging in 2008, the heyday of blogs. I didn’t use social media much at the time, I had a facebook account I hardly ever checked and I didn’t get a smart phone until four years later. Blogging was a hobby, I’d post a few photos, write a paragraph about pupusas one week, or a blurb about The Wire or hiking in the Bay Area. I had fun with it, interacting with random people who stumbled across my blog and checking out their blogs. Uncle Marc's Christmas dessert, 2009 My blog morphed into a...

Note: I haven't published anything on this blog for years, but I decided to revive it, mostly to share the experience of relocating from California to Olympia, Washington.  This past Saturday, I decided to take advantage of beautiful fall weather and go on an adventure on the Olympic Peninsula. I headed west from Olympia, stopping for a delicious breakfast in Elma, then continued along country roads that wound through the emerald pastures and timberlands of rural Grays Harbor County. Eventually we arrived at our destination: the Quinault Rainforest. I had wanted to explore the Quinault Rainforest, which receives 12 feet of rain a year, and thought it would be a good place to see fall colors. I decided to try the Fletcher Canyon trail, a four mile round trip hike that begins near the Quinault river. The trail climbs along the slope of the canyon through a sea of ferns, past giant mossy trees. The first mile or the trail is fairly manageable, but conditions deteriorated after th...