Last Visit

Mid-July..."Let's stop in at Kerry and Judd's, I have a present for Kerry." We'd just pedaled California Hwy 172, out and back, which starts and ends at the Circle S Ranch. A family inheritance lorded over by my friend of four decades, R.Judd Hanna. My best friend and cycling companion, Lisa went in search of Judd's wife Kerry Burke while Judd and I sat on his spacious horseshoe-shaped deck while surveying the Dixie Fire/Morgan Fire damaged ridge to the East for the umpteenth time. "It really devastated every tree up there." I observed. "The ash is so deep that nothing green is coming back." he added. "Whoa, see that puff of cloud. I wonder what's causing that." A doughboy pool-sized cloud lingered a couple of hundred feet above the Mill Creek meadow to the East between us and the burnt ridge. "It'll break in two and then be gone before you look back." I waited and sure enough the puff broke and then disappeared. We talked about something else while looking the other way. "Wow! There it is again. I wonder what causes that?", he hadn't noticed anything like it before. "Maybe it develops from the Growler Hot Spring up the way.", I guessed. "No, that's quite a ways up the valley. I think it's some kind of spirit." he offered. Wow, you're getting metaphysical on me here Judd. "Yeah, right." was his retort. Post script: R.Judd Hanna died on August 10 while driving his homemade fire truck from the Circle S Ranch on Mill Creek toward Wilson Lake road (the backroad to Chester). We had been coaxing him to get out of the ridiculously bad air of Mill Creek and take refuge at our house, where the air was much improved.