from Country Club to Cathedral

This morning at 9 AM we walked down a trail to a lovely picnic grove, where the Bracken Brae organization holds its community meetings.  This one was called to discuss the advisability of installing water meters -- presumably to monitor water leaks in the lines, but we suspect it is really to start charging each homeowner for water based on actual usage -- and perhaps even to link our area up to the San Lorenzo Valley water system, as drought continues to ravage our private water supplies here.  I'd hate to see that latter thing happen, as the water here now is ambrosial and the "city" water is just OK -- anything's better than Goleta water, of course.

Anyway, the various discussions ensued with good will, and we really liked the neighbors -- they are of a sort you can imagine meeting at a town-hall gathering in pioneer days; strong, enthusiastic and intelligent pioneers of the redwood forest, in sum.  I'm glad they are so fine, as we all depend on one another up here for emergencies small and large, and we have to be able to cooperate.  There was a lot of discussion about the necessity to maintain the cohesiveness and rapport that has always been part of living in B.B. -- there was some fear that individual meters might create individuality!  But I don't see that being a problem.

Anyway, when the discussion got too much for me, I just sat back on the picnic bench and watched everyone to see how the interactions were, and looked up, up, up into the spires of the redwoods and thought, "I've never been to a community meeting in a cathedral before!  This is glorious!"

I came home and baked a bunch of chocolate-chip-oatmeal cookies for all of them: they went off to do some minor repairs about the property, and John took the cookies down to the grove and joined the workers at their planned lunch, and is now off helping dig a water trench or something.