I was walking around the block barefoot. It's about a 0.8 mile loop in the desert-edged suburbs of eastern Washington. With the high in the eighties, the blacktop was almost burning under my feet. Almost. Things will get serious once the temps reach the 100s. There was a featherless chick lying dead on the sidewalk - a baby robin, I think. I could hear its parents squabbling in a nearby spruce. I don't think it'd been there long. It might've fallen that very morning. I didn't have anything to move it with, so I left the body there. It made me think about the way things in the desert break down. They don't rot so much as desiccate. The dead shrink around their bones as the dry heat sucks out the moisture. When that's done, the remains slowly shred and crumble until they're nothing more than dust, blowing in the wind with the pollen and sand that's been ground into powder.

I keep waiting for the really intense heat to hit. It should be any day now.