The Gold Hills of Summer

The hills are finally starting to gold here. They do that every year in preparation for summer, putting aside the green and flowers of the early year to settle into the long, dry seriousness of June, July and August. If you gaze at them hard enough, they start to look like sleeping lions, all taut and tawny with the hard, muscular curves of the hills, the little valleys carved into their sides like the depressions of gaunt flanks.

It'll rain soon enough in the fall, and then they'll go green again and the lions will be gone. Beautiful in either state. I guess you should never take any of these things for granted, for who knows if you won't see them again?