POEM BY THOMAS BURCHFIELD NEW TO NEVADA COUNTY
But Nature’s power and magic is only glimpsed through the city’s concrete overcoat. Up here in Grass Valley, on the edge of town, Nature makes its presence and power known with discrete details woven into a larger fabric: deer tracks in the snow outside the window, the call of quail (now extinct in San Francisco) calling from the same brush through which rabbits scamper. In the city, the stranger never knew night’s fathomless hush or saw a sparkling night sky. Up here, only weeks ago, he watched Jupiter and Saturn brush by each other, a near-impossible sight down below. Nature is the real world. Civilization is a tattered suit hanging by its threads.
