Salvation can be found before light comes when the dawn chorus tightens the fogged air. Then, 
sun rises to reveal the massive green hills rolling back to the sea.  The Irish immigrant who first 
tried to settle Kota’ti built a rough planed cabin on Crane Creek, and planted wheat. After a 
season passed, he was surprised in the middle of night by the ones whose land he had stolen: 
dozens of young Coast Miwok men running bare-chested down the sloped flanks of the fog wet 
hills, their arms extended into fiery wings; their hands clutching the three feet of burning Tule 
that hissed and popped from their arms.  Can’t you see them now? Fiery birds ghosting this 
machine of air.  The settler would escape but his cabin and wheat fields would be burned to the 
ground.  He would never return to the rolling green hills, to the dawn chorus, that had hypnotized 
him because after that night he understood why one might run, arms aflame, to save this.