Six miles, the last half mile half wading, half glissading. The first mile and a half was two, sliding backward with each step. The trees offered no shelter. Each leaf bore all the water it could hold. Each new drop released an old one.
Above Alhambra Creek, under bay laurel wreathed with dormant grape, wind swept down the path. It had been raining since I left the truck, but storm within storm filled the canyon and suddenly the air seemed half water. Stones leapt into the air. Rain. Rain! I laughed: the buttercups nodded vehement agreement.
No color but gray and green, save on the brilliant backs of bluebirds. After a while there comes a point past which you cannot get any wetter. I unzipped my coat and steam came off my chest. My stomach held bread and Lapsang Souchong. What last week was slickrock trail hard as metal had softened, become treacherous mud inclined at half again the angle of repose.
The orchard trail was crossed five times by an ephemeral brook. Inside its arcs the path was cratered mud, pile holes driven by steers. Water poured off the hills to right and left. Cow-burnt hills sent silt downslope to choke the steelhead. One stream came from the base of a fresh slide, a cold cascade, color de café con leche. A clear stream just a bit smaller came into it above the trail. I watched the two flow side by side, twinned flows in the same channel, a stripe of silver water along the brown for twenty feet and then the silt won out.
