I took the day off to luxuriate in the silence, no one home this week - NO ONE - and the silence of the birds was all mine own.

After returning from town, setting my stuff down on the bed in the bus, I looked up at the marvels of lightning... The delicious ice blue streaks of fury were raining down on the mountains in lieu of water... and then.. and then a puff of smoke, ever so small but troubling... In the flash second of my pondering, it turned from puff to plume so I ventured to call the policia to describe where in the mountains I saw this still unassuming plume blooming. After my call, worried that I hadn't described it accurately, the wind kicked up to atrocious blasts, blowing the smoke down the mountain and onto the highway and making its location more than obvious.

It was about 10 miles away, but worrisome nonetheless. A highway between me and It, but also huge gusts of wind and lightning. The firefighters took the airplanes and helicopters to the sky despite the fearsome electricity, and battled it with water and chemicals, as it billowed into a mass of smoke miles wide and showed complaint at the attempt to bat it down. The smoke cleared for a still moment and then flame was made visible at the top of the mountain, not a happy site since that made the grass eating monster headed in my general direction. And I don't know how to drive a school bus, and he was out of town.

Somewhere an hour or so after the blaze began, the sky showed mercy and the rain laid down a blanket of wet to put it all to sleep. It was an interesting way to spend a few of my off hours, afraid to take my eyes off of the mountain lest it should burst into a mouth of flames and block off my only exit.

So, grateful am I - to the rains, to the firefighters and forestry workers who risked their lives against lightning and flame, and to the absence this time of death or damage to persons or property.

And that, my dears, is what I did on my impromptu vacation.