The sky is clear at dawn, and I don't see the customary light winter frost that cakes my car windshield over night, so the evening must have been a warm and dry one. The weather people are receiving a lot of attention, as though they are the ones who make up the weather patterns we live by. I see a high of 75 degrees forecast for today. It will probably go a little higher than that here at my house.

The governor of California is declaring a state of emergency because of the drought. What do we do when our pipes run dry? I've never seen it happen here, but we've had two big fires in the middle of a season that is supposed to be wet. Ways to conserve and ration water are beginning to show up in the media. Maybe we simply do too much and need to take a break? Not only with water, but with land and air. My dream for the world is that civilization should take a sabbatical, a leave of absence, from all its frenetic activities. Let all the physical world that surrounds us take a long rest, so that our spirits might have a chance to catch up with what we have done to the earth.

Peak-oil theorists still maintain that we are going to run out of cheap and abundant oil, and that they foresee a time when civilization will be forced to slow down, because the energy just will no longer be available. I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe their projections for the future are based on their own desires and frustrations. It looks like the trend for civilization has been one continuous acceleration, as though we all jumped in an automobile and floored the gas pedal and have never let up on it. The auto goes faster and faster, while the road becomes more difficult to navigate at these increasingly higher speeds.

Up north near Sacramento lies Folsom Lake, which is becoming ridiculously low from this lack of rain and snow. The remnants of an old gold-mining town called Mormon Island are beginning to reappear, after being flooded over in 1955. A small glimpse of life some 60 years ago, where 2500 people once lived, before their life along the river became inundated. What would life be like if we could go back and reroute the last 60 years of our history?