When a piece of you never really leaves a place it seems more accurately a re-awakening. Once returned I cannot help but wake up before the sun - to watch it crest the ridge, watch its rays chase the shadow line down the canyon wall. And to watch the full moon fall through the purpling sky.
A return in spring is easy to romanticize. The brown hills are green again and transient color and fragrance bursts. New vivid sycamore leaves sprout, black and purple sage, ceanothus covers whole hillsides in faux frost...
