The wind folds through the grass, turning it over, sculpting it, and, if you listen closely, you can hear the grass as it bends.

In the distance there is the ever-present hum of the river, a muffled noise pressing in on you from somewhere far off, somewhere beyond the crest of the hill, and in the air there is the carrot-like smell of desert parsley, and the meadowlarks calling, their songs rising like sunlight from the gullies, all those many small birds hopping unseen among the balsamroot flowers; flowers that are bright as sunflowers, and pungent in the way of daisies.

You cut your own trail through the lupines and the fragile woodland stars, your feet tangling in sticky mats of wild cucumber, and at the top of the hill you crouch, pantingly, to study the strange, brown lilies with green spots on their petals. There, after you wind through scrub oak thickets, their branches sharp with dried lichen, great carpets of miners lettuce lining their trunks, you make it to the summit.

The river is finally visible, a whole stretch of it bending into the hills below you, the wind pounding in, coastal in its strength, the ravens riding long currents, two of them darting together among the swifts, a small hawk chasing them, a turkey vulture gliding silently above them all. You stand there, you and the flowers, and you squint into the wind, and you block the sun with your hand so you can see; so you can see all of it–everything.