when harry thought of the approaching season he pictured it like a flood , or like an avalanche , cloudy or dusty and distant , still rounding itself up , still building ; like something you could hear advancing if you really listened : a nebulous but mammoth something , still the far side of the san gabriel mountains , upper desert somewhere , no , farther away than that : nevada , utah , arizona , the far side of taller mountains , amassing , sweeping , almost quaking the earth as it spread out from some unknown mid-continent epicenter toward the pacific , soon to reach the san gabriels and scale them to then creep not so unhurriedly down the crevices and slopes this side of those silent hills to find sierra madre , monrovia , altadena , pasadena , and from there on to the ocean , smothering everything in-between with lust .