dust and dry brush

The other day, Devin read me a short story by Joan Didion about the Los Angeles area and the wildfires that tear through these hills during the summers.  Hearing the story while staring at the endless brown of dust and dry brush gave grounding to the images of wildfires that I can recall seeing on the television.  The dust billows and blows like a diaphanous skirt, so you practically have to tiptoe the car down the driveway to keep the ground decent.  

I first really noticed the dryness when the little air plants (tillandsia of various sorts) that I had nurtured in San Francisco began to curl into themselves and cry out hoarsely.  A spray in the morning was no longer sufficient, even when they were being kept inside the kitchen.  If I stepped away and returned in a matter of thirty minutes, I'd return to see them scaly and rigid, as if their very existence was becoming ossified and they'd soon crunch like abandoned seashells into little calcified piles.  Soon all the littlest ones tipped over hollowly, and a rescue greenhouse was improvised for the sole survivor out of a plastic bag, where it finally seems to be recovering.