I woke up on the morning of September 9th and it was too early, it was still very early twilight so I went back to sleep. When I woke again, it was still twilight except it was nine o’clock, well past dawn. Something was wrong. Well, duh! Something has been wrong for months, years, really. But this was more wrong. There was a doe with two fawns and a yearling in the back yard and she knew something was wrong. As the day wore on, it got darker not lighter.

Michele and I were both born in California so we are true Californians who know that, when something weird happens, it is time to get in the car and drive around. We started by going to what passes as the local shopping center to drop Precious Mae off at the vet. (She had insisted that she be allowed outside to play and the result was that she had a runny eye which turned out to be caused by a small piece of ash.) Under the new reality, we dropped Precious Mae off by putting her in her carrier and leaving it on the bench outside the vet’s office, they then came out and took both Precious Mae and the carrier inside and told us they would call us when she was ready to pickup.

By now it was 2:30 in the afternoon, dark, and, surprisingly, cold at 61°F. We decided to drive up to a view spot overlooking Crystal Springs Lakes but they were all closed so we drove up to Skyline which runs along the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains and then back to the vet to pick up Precious. The world looked terrifyingly beautiful.