First Day?

Well here it is, the first day of school at Sacramento State. Or so they tell me. It's kind of hard to tell these days.  I mean, I was there, the campus was there. But no one else was there. Ghost town. If you ever watched the TV show "Last Man on Earth", you'd know what I experienced today. It was very much like that.

So the semester started, and crickets chirped. And squirrels searched in vain for morsels of food to eat. I'm sure the squirrels miss the students most of all. Having people around provided a stable food source, either from careless droppings or purposeful feedings. Usually both. What a buffet of food they've lost! 

I have no idea if anyone had any classes today. I mean I have to imagine that hundred and thousands of students were sitting somewhere, hovered over their computer screens, while professors droned on through Zoom and tried to make the best of it. Many probably experienced problems with internet, problems with technology, and so on. The same problems I see with my son's first grad class everyday. Though I hope the college students don't constantly interrupt class to share random and irrelevant tidbits of their lives with everyone. In any case, I'm sure students attended classes today as best they could.

I sat in my office and drank cocoa. Also I went for a walk.

I mean I did get productive things done. Got caught up with all of the space reservations that had to be changed, or deleted, or created, owing to the ever changing environment of our times. And I cleaned up my emails, and sent some out to start getting ready for the long haul of the semester. And it will be a long haul, I think, with a lot of busy times ahead.

But boy, was it dead today. Spooky. It's been nearly a year now of this. I think we're all ready to get back to normalcy. So much for the first day of classes.

Better Late Than Never

Wow,  I haven't written on this thing since last year. Of course that would have been funnier if I wrote that line on January 1. Maybe January 2. But here we are, three weeks into the New Year. I suppose it would be the appropriate time to reaffirm my resolutions, reflect on the past year. Maybe reflect on the upcoming year. Well, if I was one to do such things for the sake of a holiday. 

It did occur to me the other day that my tastes in nature have come full circle. It was sort of an epiphany. Growing up, I was more of a child of the mountains. I know I wrote about that once before. We never went to the beach. We went camping, in the mountains. Summer after summer after summer. In recent years I migrated to the ocean, making regular pilgrimages to San Francisco to explore the coastlines. And they were great, and they restored me. And I needed that.

In recent months I've diverted my attentions back to the mountains, and the forests. Auburn State Recreation Area, Sugar Pine Mountain, Griffith Quarry, Empire Mine, and on and on. Perhaps it was influenced by all those hours playing Minecraft, exploring mountainsides. But no, there were coastlines there too. But it's been refreshing, smelling the fresh pine-scented air again. Just the smell of it brings back fond memories.

Tomorrow Connor and I will try another place around Colfax or Auburn. Because he wanted to go hiking in a "forest" with me. After our successful trip this past Monday to Griffith Quarry. I'm sure it will be delightfully brisk and clean, after winter finally arrived today to wash a bit of the dryness away, and now threatens to dump some snow across the Sierras next week.

You know what it is? It's the driving distance. It's a lot closer to get to the mountains from here than the coast. And the idea of spending less time in the car and more in nature has been appealing. It's just the economy of it all, I suppose. 

In any case, if nothing else, variety is good. The 'spice' of life and all that. And hey, Happy New Year. Three weeks late. Well, better late than never.