Warm Fades

Today was one of those October days that seemed ordered from a catalog, ticking off the options: electric blue sky…flaming riot of leaves falling and swirling in the wind….mild, warm breeze…long stretches of silence split only by birdsong.

We ate brunch at a new place one town over, recently opened by a retired firefighter and his family. Just after they opened, one of their sons died tragically, and they had to close up for a while. Since they have reopened, we decided to give them a try today. It’s a little cafe’, clean and nicely decorated in a firehouse motif. Nothing fancy. We heard our waitress talking to a patron and noting that her help had deserted her for the day, but she rose to the occasion and our wait wasn’t terribly long. The food was tasty and we enjoyed watching the owner interact with his grandchildren, and we thought of the pain and tragedy he and his wife have recently shouldered. We talked of interior things and I mused aloud that I am thinking seriously of resuming my long-ago abandoned habit of lectio divina and daily recitation of some of the little offices. One seeks comfort when one feels unmoored, isn’t this so?

After we left, Mrs. Orr suggested we drive over to the Natural Tunnel State Park, a place we haven’t been in a few years. On the little lane leading into the park, we were disappointed to see that the little roadside burger joint where we once bought our dog Bonnie a hamburger had closed, probably due to the scamdemic. When we reached the park entrance we raised our eyebrows at the price increase for entry: five dollars a car instead of the former two. But everything is more expensive now; behold our grocery bill each week.

After we parked, we took the cable lift down to the bottom of the mountain, where the natural tunnel is located.  My wife and I laughed at how we gasped when the swinging seats left the gearhouse and swooped down at a steep angle; our stomachs lifted just a bit, and we talked about how our youthful boldness has faded over the years. The tunnel, a limestone shelf, was carved by the blade of water countless years ago, and is a witchy place, shaded and shadowed. The local coal trains pass through its dark length a few times a day, not nearly as often as they did back in the heyday of mining operations in the area. The staff were setting up for a Halloween thing tonight. After dark, children will ride down to the tunnel with battery powered lanterns and hear ghost stories and folk tales in the eerie acoustics of the tunnel and the concave cliff in which it sits. As we walked around the tunnel, we listened to the pigeons and doves perched on little rock ledges along the cliff, cooing and pocking and strutting under the blue sky.  We watched the entrance of a cave at the base of the cliff, hoping to see a bear poke his prehibernation snout out. And we talked about how enjoyable it would be to have been a child here with the lore and legends surrounding us in these spooky mountains on a crisp late October night.

We sat up late last night watching old movies and listening to lots of music. We stumbled onto a musician we’d never heard before and became fans within an hour. Her name is Kate Rusby, a northern Englishwoman from the Yorkshire region. She sings mostly traditional English and border ballads, and a lot of original songs based on ancient lyrics for which she combs the used book shoppes in her nearby villages. We were struck not only by her voice and presence and talent, but also by how wholesome she looks, unadorned with the garish ink graffiti most younger women sport on their skins these days, or the fishing tackle in the face piercings so much in vogue.

One of the first songs that really caught ahold of me was The Lark, which I will share here for you. I hope you folks enjoy it. Please note that the young woman in the video is NOT Kate Rusby. She does appear in still photographs in the second tune, Let The Cold Wind Blow.

We will have a warm day again tomorrow, in the mid-seventies, and then the rain will arrive Monday to strip much of the leaves from the watching trees, and it will be much colder next week. And how did this happen. that November is so soon arrived, and the time will change a week from tonight, and the spinning seems to be increasing in velocity.

Be at peace, my dear readers. And look to the east. The light will appear there.

~ S.K. Orr