Cool morning, clear light, coyote tracks on the path. The drought is on, three years now, and the lake, it's shrinking.

You can read it in the reeds, that stripe, pale green, where the water level once was. There's a lush little meadow where an inlet went dry and ducks now walk where once they paddled.

We're hoping for rain, abundant and early, but the yes or no of that is months away. So meanwhile we watch, watch and learn, watch nature, coping.