Ready for the harvest.

Tonight was the last night of every other friday night volleyball. Ranger Dan owns a few acres in Edna Valley and invites everyone who's ever met him to come play in his field until sunset. I'm not much of an athlete, but there's so much about this evening that I enjoy.

The first thing that I noticed about Ranger Dan and John Salisbury (my other vineyard boss) was their humility. There is something profoundly self sacrificing about working with the earth. When I met Dan, he invited me to work with him all year in the vines. I will be harvesting, crushing, producing, bottling, enjoying... I know nothing about Dan's accomplishments. I only know about his mistakes with the vines. I have noticed this in the men I meet who respect the earth. They don't want me to know what they have done, because, they have not done much of it. I have needed to meet men like this after four years of rising towers in New York.

And then there is all of the scenery. I watch volleyball from atop of a hill. Below me in San Luis. It is nestled in between ranges of hills and mountains. We are a protected town. Just before sunset, the fog rolls in. This is what I want you to imagine. The fog is like nothing other than cotton balls. Thousands of cotton balls rolling over San Luis heading toward us. They block the sunset, but their holes leak orange. We are a covered town. And then it stops, and the sun stops setting. And, just for a moment, everything is golden. The hills, the leaves, the cotton ball fog. and then, the fog hovers in the valley waiting for the next sunlight. And we lay on the picnic table until the stars come out. More stars that we've ever seen in town. The sky is glittered. And we lay there until we are too cold to stay. And then we go home, thankful for a friend who lives hidden in the hills. Ready for the harvest and ready for the sunset fog and ready for the stars.