Life Of A Nomad - Solvang No. 1
We’ve been living in the suburbs of Solvang temporarily since May 2020. The landlord couple calls our little dwelling the Carriage House. Supposedly it was part of a working barn before they bought the property, hence the name Carriage House.
At the end of the road, the house is opening southwest to a field of pinot noir vines belonged to a reputable winemaker. Behind those vines set hills rolling into the end of the horizon.
Sunset is the magical hour. In LA, I’m used to the deeply saturated golden orange and the vibrant pinkish purple. It is a magnificent oil-on-canvas. Brushstrokes are so powerful as if the painter must exercise substantial willpower of the day. Here, however, usually is a watercolor. There is rarely any cloud on most days. The sky starts with almost a cerulean blue. The top drops soft pink silk with satin shin and another soft peach chiffon layer to blend everything and make them less identifiable. The chiffon is slightly shorter, revealing just a glimpse into the pink’s playfulness and flirt.
From time to time in the late summer, though, paints just get poured all over. I stood there, speechless, not knowing where I am anymore.
Suddenly the work ground is cleaned, and the dome becomes immeasurably dark. There’s no light pollution. Therefore, I can see every star as far as my vision allows. The Milky Way runs across right above the roof. Jupiter is always big and bright, Saturn much smaller and dimmer but still visible. I always look for the pair at night. It seems to me they never part their ways, which is probably not true. After all, I only know them from the star-watching app on my phone. I could also see Mars for much of July. But my little camera couldn’t handle the moon’s overwhelming brightness.
One night at 1 am, I was sitting in the yard waiting for an image to finish its exposure. Then I heard some noise coming from the garden gate. I turned my eyes towards the gate and saw another pair of glowing eyes. Then I vaguely recognized a cat animal’s body shape.
“Oh crap! It’s Mr. Bob.” I thought to myself.
He didn’t appear to be bothered by me at all, elegantly jumped over between bars of the gate into the yard, and started his casual runway walk. “Holly!” I screamed a little in my head, grabbed the tripod, and fled into the house. Through the window, I saw him crossed the fence and vanished into the vines. That was the second time I met Mr. Bob. He’s a bobcat.
A couple of weeks ago, I was about to take Tof out for her bedtime pee-pee. As I turned on the back porch light, I heard some rubbing sound coming from the top. “Pew!” Something with weight jumped off the roof onto the side fence. Do you know the feeling that the weight of your shoulder all of a sudden got lifted? That was how I felt for the house. I was stunned by what came next: a Tof-sized animal, butt towards me, strolled passing my back patio, across the yard, out of the gate, and left. He (I refer to animals whose sexes are unknown to me as “he” since Tof is a girl) is brown with black patterns similar to those on leopards, his hind legs packed with lean muscles, tail thick, short, and slightly curled up. His walk was the signature catwalk, slow, steady, confident, effortless. I had lived in cities of concrete for my entire life before this and had no clue what he was. So the next day, I told my husband a leopard visited us. He looked at me, astonished yet filled with suspicion: “I don’t think leopards live here? Did you see a bobcat?”
I googled and pulled a picture “that’s exactly what I saw!” Since that moment, I always wanted Mr. Bob to visit another time to take a picture. So he did. Yet, I still took no pictures.
It reminded me that a month or so ago, a ferret sprawled along my window seal. I stared at him with admiration, missing my perfect chance to capture his sexy body. “He is so long.” I kept telling myself.
I started reading a book called _The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut._It’s an account of the anthropologist Nigel Barley’s experiences in Cameroon, central Africa. It was his first fieldwork experience. His living environment and civilization are drastically different from where I’m situated. But somehow, this little dwell reminds me of his hut. That’s a fantastic book, by the way—a lot of good laughs and thoughts from cover to cover.
Nigel Barley offers vivid accounts of his first fieldwork experience as an anthropologist in Cameroon, central Africa.
Along with Mr. Bob, I discovered a lot of life aspects that were/are new and interesting. My life is only representative of mine, and I take joy from small things in it. I hope you find pleasant surprises in yours as well.