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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…
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Bears All Her Sons Away
I stepped outside with the dogs into a morning blanket of warm mist and fog, a sultry Woden’s Day in the mountains, and I breathed deep. The fog muffled the cow-calls and the birdsong, and the dogs disappeared into the gray air as they went to do their business. One of the female hummingbirds zoomed out of the gloom, right up to my face, cocking her head with a curious gesture that drew a laugh from me. She retreated to the feeder and breakfasted while I stood and absorbed the last quiet I would probably know on this particular day. I felt a tinge of sadness, and wondered why. And…
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What Matters As Advent Approaches
It felt so cold this morning that I could feel it working in my bones, as if little ice crystals were forming in the synovial fluid of my knuckles and knees and ankles. The world outside was a frosted sheet of patched russet, an expanse of the leaves weighed down by the same sort of tiny ice crystals. While Jinx and I were walking (Bluebelle sticking close to my wife in the warm house), I saw a large red oak leaf detach from the tree over near the cemetery and glide like a paper airplane down, then over, then back this way, then down a little more, then that way,…
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Jinxaversary
It’s hard to believe that it’s been an entire year since I wrote this post. The spotted menace awakened us this morning with his usual antics, and I thumped him and pounded him and rassled with him and then I sang him a “Happy Jinxaversary” song to the tune of the overture from William Tell. Ever the astute critic, Jinx showed his appreciation by trying to pull my shirt off of me. After he ate, we went for a walk. We were standing on the side of the road when our cattleman neighbor drove past with an enormous bull in a cattle car, headed for the Saturday auction. The bull…
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The First Sunday in Lent
The sun favored us all day, rising in a golden mist, warming and drying the marshy earth. Jinx and I were out early, enjoying the welcome light. After our walk, I returned to the house. Jinx followed his own inner urgings and stayed out all day, napping in the sunshine beneath the Japanese maple out front. A washing machine on the fritz, a large limb broken somehow from the weeping willow, a new security light to install, a writing project to complete — the sun moved across the sky with extra speed today, or so it seemed. And now it dips towards the western ridge, and it’s not too long…
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Cycles
A year ago today, an intrepid heating & A/C repairman helped me remove a dead and reeking possum from our furnace. A few days ago I caught a young possum in a live trap in the cellar. And this morning? It was raining hard and steady when I let the dogs outside. Little Dixee immediately alerted on something and followed the scent all over the back yard, nose to grass, stub of a tail quivering like the needles on a polygraph. Jinx did his bidness and wanted back inside, but not the little dowager. I watched her as she tracked around and then finally reared up on her hind legs…
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All The Help
While getting ready for work, I glanced down at the trash can in my bathroom. In stark relief against the white interior was a daddy longlegs (harvestman), busily scrambling in an attempt to escape from the situation he’d gotten himself into. Watching the little thing, I thought back to the day when my wife rescued a chipmunk from a wading pool in our back yard. By the time she discovered it, the poor creature had almost exhausted itself swimming round and round, trying to find a way out of the circular and watery hell into which it had fallen. She lifted the chipmunk out and laid it on the grass,…
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The Fogs Of August
My mother and grandmother taught me to count the number of foggy mornings during the month of August. The number, they told me gravely, would correspond to the number of snows in the coming winter. I’ve tracked the August fogs more closely since we purchased our little farm here, and while never exact, the ratio of fogs to snows is fairly close. So far this month, we have had nine fogs out of twelve mornings. Last winter was quite mild, and the old-timers in these parts are already beginning to murmur about how “we’re due for a bad, bad winter.” We shall see. I recently re-watched one of my favorite…
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Farewell, Miss Barbara
I stopped at the grocery store on the way home yesterday to pick up a couple of things. The store, part of a small, local chain, sits at the foot of a mountain next to a bank, a gas station, and a fast food joint. The adjoining mountain is part of the store’s charm; in all weathers, the sheer slope with its trees and crags rises up in a dramatic sweep when one steps out of the store to return to one’s vehicle. The mountain looks almost like a dormant volcano, with its near-perfect cone shape and its accompanying sense of looming and watching. Waiting. Patient as a jove. When…