Moisture is a word best left unspoken, but the montane hinterlands, crispy with drought, stand in sore need of it. Light fleet thunderstorms have come and gone, gone and come, have left some measure of modest measured precipitation, more at elevation, depending on cardinal exposure. In the parking lot of the district ranger station (closed to visitors) the wooden anthropomorphic fire safety bear presents his fire danger ratings. First morning coffee, second morning coffee, and a third-year seasonal forestry technician comes out to set the hazard dial. As summer passes into fall, those few thunderstorms at elevation, the ochre of extreme has settled into a high light yellow. The dial is swung down, by degrees, later and later every year, though not enough to dissuade, so far, metropolitan stakeholders from using day-use and overnight-use forest recreation facilities, their numbers increasing annually, increasing steadily. The forestry technician swings down the dial, from ochre to a high light yellow, while the metropolitan traffic filters down from the highways onto forest access roads, in spite or perhaps because of the inclement weather, which is different, after all, from the inclement weather of the month previous.
Light fleet thunderstorms have swept over the foothills, have swept over the mountains. Election signs for electeds, incumbent or prospective, catch the gathering wind, aflutter, like feathers or like slight white smoke. The opposition party (hinterlands division) vows to reject results from an illegitimate election (state, federal, whatever) if they elected. The insurrectionary spirit motivates the county comptroller; it motivates the county assessor. At the mountain lodge golf-course bar and grill happy-hour late business luncheon, these selfsame officials debate federal grant money for drainage culverts, debate federal grant money for traffic signals. Their beers are handed them promptly, their baskets of hand-cut sweet potato fries (with fresh herbed aioli gratis) are handed them promptly, handed by the selfsame forestry technician, her other seasonal job another seasonal routine. Mounted mountain goat heads stare down, auditing the business of local government (hinterlands division, conservative revolutionary) and the business of tourist industry (seasonal) food service provision.
Elsewhere, in the gathering dusk, the wooden anthropometric fire safety bear gazes skyward, at the thunderclouds building and dissolving, high building and fast dissolving, scattered thundering, scattered rainfall, sorely needed, flaring overhead into night.
