Chapter Thirty-One
Locked Down, Healing Up
June continued to be beautiful. Sunny day followed gorgeously sunny day. For most of drought-stricken California, this was dire news. Rachel couldn’t have been happier.
The state was on its way to desertification. Much of it had been desert anyway before money moved in. Now a warming climate and shifting weather patterns were presenting challenges no amount of capital could overcome.
Mountain snowmelt was becoming a thing of the past, with rivers and reservoirs both dropping unstoppably. Now agricultural concerns were busy emptying aquifers as fast as they could. Rapaciously they drained this last reserve to grow luxury crops like almonds. With the land literally sinking as groundwater was sucked away, and regular wildfires racing across the
