The Myth of the Breeze: Industrial Fields and Windy Days on the Outskirts of Davis (the first in a series)
They told me there was a nice breeze out here. I remember it exactly. “It’s always a bit cooler here than in town, and a nice breeze comes through in the evenings.” Little did I know that a “nice breeze” translated to a motion-stopping wind on my bike ride home from town. With little other than fields of produce anywhere nearby, I become the only resistance to the wind. Sometimes I envision all the tiny particles of wind changing their course when they see me coming. It feels like battling a sunny-skied hurricane trying to get home. Recently I stepped off my bike to take a brief break and the wind died. Oh, I guess this is a nice breeze.
In September I moved from Los Angeles to the countryside. I wanted a garden and a quiet room in which to focus on my studies. I was not particularly interested in a small town. I wanted either the city, or the opposite of the city. But the tomato field next to my house is being harvested to head to the Campbell’s factory. Those are headed for the city. And I can’t tell if my garden is bug-free because of my stellar compost or because the pesticides from neighboring fields are carried here by the ‘nice breeze.’ And my room is not quiet. The tree outside of my window whistles all evening long in the wind. It may as well be a police helicopter. Alright, perhaps that is a bit drastic. But what I have found in the time I have been living here is that I have not escaped the city. This industrial landscape has changed the weather, the biodiversity, the shape, and the smell of the land. As I bike along the perfectly flat, straight road to school, I realize that the changes that have come to this land have put me closer to the industrial than I may have ever been in Los Angeles. And I grapple with this. This land is utilitarian and commercial. But I have, in my quest for romance, given in to this land as pastoral and nostalgic. I have fled the city in search of the quiet. I am student of landscapes, and am learning of the dangers of my own.
city folk like us forget/ do not realize that “quaint” is often a working, smelly, hardscrabble landscape, full of 18 wheelers, new noises, big machines and the like. at 60 miles an hour from the side of the road i guess anything looks quaint. btw– you still got that photo essay book? we should revive it considering your new place in the world
It sounds so strangely beautiful and depressing…enchanting in a way you dont expect and can’t help feeling guity about…is there such thing as “rural” in California, or does our economy (however damaged) strip all the quaint-ness away…we do feed lots of people. I like where you’re going bobby.
I was once told, by a California man whom I trust (Evan’s dad), that California, as graceful and seemingly natural as its rural parts are, the state is actually the most altered landscape on earth. I’m curious.
rien ne vit excepté le vent.