Lately though that has not been the case.
It’s a function of it being Summer and me leaving the windows open for the evening breezes. I fall asleep listening to the crickets and wind in the trees.
I might wake up if the dog shifts position, or jumps back up on the bed after getting a drink. I fall back to sleep quickly after he settles. There’s a security seeing his silhouette on the corner of the bed. I can tell in the darkness that he’s got his noise pointed toward the open sliding door. If anything were to be bold enough to come to the screen he’d be awake, letting me know about it.
The past few days it’s not been the dog who’s waking me up. It’s other humans!
Crazy Pants has taken to blood curdling screams sometime between 5:00 and 6:30 am. One of these days someone she lives with will realize that they can choke the life out of her and no matter how much she screams no-one will think to call the cops or report anything out of the ordinary.
Yesterday she started the morning by kicking or punching one of the men living over there. I don’t know exactly what she did but I woke to a male sound that reminded me of similar sounds guys make if they’re kicked in the balls or kicked in the gut. Moments later she was screaming about how lazy and useless, blah, blah, blah. After a few minutes a strained male voice was replying. There was an escalation of the argument and increase in volume then suddenly Crazy Pants was quiet. If he choked her, I’m not sure I’d be able to testify that he was in the wrong. She was screaming again this morning so apparently he didn’t choke her to death.
This morning the trash truck showed up at 6:15 am to pick up the trash that they’d not bothered to pick up on Monday. The recycling truck came through, but the regular trash truck didn’t. They needn’t have bothered, most of us pulled our trash cans back off the street because we don’t like cleaning up after the nocturnal critters that like to get into the trash. I’m one of the few folks on this street that still has bear proof trash bins. All the new bins supplied by the trash company have no locking mechanism at all. So raccoons, and other night critters attracted by kitchen scraps, sometimes turn the cans over, spreading the contents all over the street or yards.
There’s a reason the trash company issued bear proof trash cans years ago. But that’s been forgotten by some, and the newbies to town never think about the natural wildlife potentially in the area. It’s always funny when a newbie reports seeing a coyote and the old folks (like myself) respond with “And?” We’re expecting something more than, “I saw a coyote!”
Due to the tropical storm, we’ve had heavy construction equipment working in the wash up & down the canyon. This is the second time this year. The distinctive “Beep Beep Beep” starts around 6:45 right after the large diesel engines rumble to life. They even worked Saturday and Sunday so there was no respite from living in a construction zone.
Before they did the “Wash Improvement” we never had dump trucks, bulldozers, bucket diggers, or any of that stuff up here. Now it’s a yearly event.
I miss the silence of the forest, I miss seeing all the wildlife that we used to see in this canyon before the “wash Improvement project” destroyed the water source, habitat, and local environment. The construction sounds alone seem to drive away some animals.
It might have something to do with the time of year the construction starts. I miss having owls nesting near my house. Their hooting in the night was comforting. The red tail hawks moved much higher into the mountains. I’ll still see them soaring on thermals. Sometimes I’ll hear one snatching a small rabbit up out on some nearby open flats. I used to see them hunting all the time. They make spectacular dives, falling like a stone, flaring their wings out at the last possible moment claws extending, then bam! Their prey seems to just vanish.
Even the coyotes have left the canyon. It’s been years since I’ve seen a bear.
Maybe the trash company is right, there’s no need for the security of bear proof trashcans. The habitat has been sufficiently destroyed that humans don’t encounter their distant cousins anymore.
I want to be clear. This is not about climate change. This is about a man made environmental disaster committed in the name of flood control. This is about an environmental study that was incomplete at best, or the county purchased a “Rubber Stamp” at worst. There is still water in the wash. It’s just not accessible most of the time. This is due to the widening and flattening of the wash.
Before improvement, there was a stream about two feet wide and 2 to 3 inches deep most of the year, it only dried up in late Summer. This stream was fed from further up the mountainside. Up in the heights there are collecting pools that rainfall and snow melt keep full most of the year. Water from these collecting pools made its way down the wash splashing over rocks and down small waterfalls churning and bubbling until it made it to my level. The flowing water was cold, and clear. It provided life to all manner of critter that lived in the forest. You name any animal native to this region and we had it.
Walking along the rim of the wash in the early morning or evening you’d see deer, raccoons, sometimes bear, bobcat, cougar, and a variety of birds. It was possible to observe the phenomena of “Peace at the watering hole”. All the animals needed water so it was rare to see any hunting at the water’s edge. 50 yards from the water source all bets were off!
The “improvement” widened and flattened the bottom of the wash. The water still flows from the collecting pools as it always has. The collecting pools are beyond the reach of the county because they exist on National Forest Land therefore they haven’t been “improved”. The water flows down the natural creek bed to the place where the county “improved” things, when it hits the wide flat areas, it spreads out and soaks into the soil. Much of the water evaporates and for most of the year the bottom of the wash is a mud flat, instead of a place with abundant wildlife. Insects and small mammals can capitalize on what water is present, but animals larger than rodents can’t.
Man, once again makes a desert and calls it good.
Lately we’ve had a new “wake up” feature. There’s someone up the road who may be into those stupid wanna-be drift cars. Their only claim to being a “drift car” is a straight exhaust which is unbearably loud when the vehicle is going up a 15-20° incline anytime of day. It does seem especially loud at midnight though. Unfortunately, where there’s one wanna-be “drift car” others soon follow. Now there’s that noise several times in the evening and often right up to about 2 am. I don’t know what the hell they’re doing but the same cars drive up and down the street multiple times every night.
One car in particular leaves every weekday morning at about 7:30am. It’s annoying but I’m already up by then. I’d be up by then because my alarm is set for 7:15am. Not that I ever get to hear that waking me up if I’m home.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my alarm did in fact wake me. I made this discovery while I was on a cross country trip last year. I was staying in hotels and found that they were quieter than my home. Isn’t that a kick in the pants?
These are some of the things that go through my mind when I consider moving. The noise alone is reason enough for me to leave. But that begs the question where do I go?
Pulling up stakes is one thing, the question is, “where do you go that would be different?” I don’t want to trade one set of annoying issues for another set of super annoying issues.
I’m pretty sure I know what I don’t want, I don’t know exactly what I do want yet. Come Winter, I’ll have the house closed and the noise won’t be such a big deal. Maybe then I’ll have more restful nights sleep and sleep until my alarm wakes me.
Perhaps with more restful sleep will come answers to questions about where I go from here.
