Here. State of Goldenness.

There are but two seasons in California.  Green.  And Gold.

Green comes for but a moment or two in the Spring.  A couple few weeks where the entire state seems so fresh and popping with green everywhere.  But it's just a transitory state of color for soon the same green becomes gold and it stays gold until the end to where it browns out.  Even brown though is a state of gold.
California's nickname, the Golden State, some think comes from the goldrush days (and maybe it does, I have no idea) but to me the golden state comes not because of a metal in the mountains but from the color of the grasses.  And the dust.
Even the colors whose intrinsic nature is not to be gold, to me feels like they want to become gold.

I spent the last almost three weeks driving in the gold of California.  Dusty hot Goldenness. 2500 miles of gold.  Quite a bit of that 2500 miles was driving at 5 miles an hour.  Any more than that, then you kick up a storm of dust and you choke as you open your door.

Brushed off that gold dust in so many good ol boy bars, slept in that gold in some of the vineyards so I could feel the terroir of the place.  Slept with owls and hawks and rabbits and coyote covered in that gold.

Every vineyard that still had grapes (not sure why I was hired so late in the season as some of the vineyards were picked already) I would cut off a cluster and eat it.  Chard, Cab, Petit, Muscat, Syrah and on and on. Really nice to eat what you're shooting.

Every feather no matter how big or small felt like a gift left only for me.

The current trend in vineyards is Owl boxes.  They are everywhere around the perimeter of vineyards.  They would fly away if I came to shoot near them but soon feeling like I wasn't a threat they would come back and look at me.  The remnants of their meals lay at the base of their homes.