Trick-or-Treat!

Ghosts and goblins haunted the streets of my ordinary suburban neighborhood yesterday during our third annual Halloween parade. 

Two costumes in particular caught my eye, worn by two adorable toddlers who are so hard to capture standing still that this (admittedly very amateur) photographer had no time to consider background.

But the bee and the dog did pose momentarily before joining the parade and grabbing treats. And later, they enjoyed the moon bounce, which sent them scurrying and tumbling down the slide. 

And this all happened the day before All Hallows' Eve. Tonight: more of the same...

Royal Lake

This week, the fall colors lured us out, and Claire and Rory and I (well, Rory was being worn by her mama) hiked around Royal Lake, only 30 minutes from here but a place I'd never seen. 

What a discovery! The two-mile trail winds through woods and open meadow and skirts a small dam. We saw ducks and geese in the lake and turtles sunning themselves on a log. 

And then there were the breathtaking colors: The brilliant scarlet of the maples, the glow-from-within orange of the American beech and the sunny yellows of the tulip tree. 

We had a flurry of excitement at the end of our walk, including a car that wouldn't start. But what lingers in my mind now is the beauty of the stroll ... and of the company. 

7:32

Still thinking of the sunrise I saw on the beach. By this time the clouds would be pinking and purpling, the "rosy-fingered dawn" expanding her reach. We are only minutes away, sunrise at 7:32 this morning and now it's 7:26. 

What I thought earlier in the month when I was observing the phenomenon in person was how anthropocentric we are: sunrise. Shouldn't it be earth turn or earth set? 

But we name things as we see them, and to us the sun does rise, although it may seem to flatten and split in the process. 

I'm seeing it again, the miraculousness of it all. It's 7:32. I'm pushing publish.

Pulling a Churchill

This morning, I'm pulling a Winston Churchill and writing in bed. I've already had a good long session of journal writing and have moved on to the blog, all without stepping a foot downstairs.  

True, it's not very professional. I wouldn't want to be in a Zoom meeting right now. And it may not be the best posture for the back. But it seems like the epitome of luxury, to not have to rush up or rush out, to take my time getting used to the morning, to sidle into the day from a reclining position. 

But I can hear Copper downstairs, his nails clicking on the floor. He'll want to go out. And come to think of it, a cup of tea would be nice, maybe even some yogurt. 

I'm wise enough to know that when thoughts of food and drink start intruding, it's time to pop up, get dressed, and start the vertical part of the day. 

(One potential problem with writing in bed: being unable to read what you wrote when you were there.)

Doing Homework

Now when I post late in the day I have a convenient excuse: I'm doing homework! Whether or not I am in that instance, it's true in general because in general I am often doing homework, maybe more of it than I should.

I'm not sure whether I'm making too big a deal out of the assignments, can't turn them around as quickly as I'd like or if it's just difficult material — probably some combination of the three. And then there are the rabbit holes. Today I spent 30 minutes listening to a lecture on religion and violence, tangentially related to an assignment, primarily because it was interesting.

The endpoint of all this is that I have more empathy now for students, exam-takers and learners everywhere. 

Leaves in Balance

It's warmer this morning, a beckoning kind of warmth, a come-out-and-walk-in-me warmth. I need to get up and get out in it, but first I want to write about the leaves, about how somehow, despite the three (3!) trees we lost last month there are still piles of leaves in the yard. 

I must put those leaves in perspective, though, remember the depth of them in the old days, when raking was even more daunting than it is now and my efforts were often undermined by three giggly girls jumping and playing in them. 

Now the girls are grown and the leaves are sparser, the muscles weaker, too, so perhaps it all balances out. I'd like to think it does.

Taps

Over the weekend I had a chance to do something I've meant to do for years, to be part of an 8th Air Force Historical Society event, thanks to a friend who's a member. My dad flew in the 95th bomb group of the 8th Air Force and was active in both the 95th Bomb Group and 8th Air Force organizations. I cheered him on through the years but never had time to join him.

Now, of course, I wish I had. Because as much as I enjoyed meeting a couple of the WWII veterans present, all up in their 90s, of course, I only missed Dad more.

There was the familiar 8th Air Force insignia, the talk of where stationed, at some village or another in Britain's East Anglia. There were the facts and figures, amazing to recount. In 1942 the 8th Air Force had a dozen members. Two years later, there were 300,000. 

And now they're contracting again, have been for some time, at least when it comes to those who served in WWII. In a crowd of 400-plus ... only seven were veterans of the Second World War. 

Far Away and Close at Hand

Since witnessing sunrise on the beach last week I've been thinking how nice it is to have a view of the horizon. It doesn't have to be the Atlantic through a scrim of dune grass. I'd welcome any view that took me out of tangled green. 

Be careful what you wish for, though, I tell myself. Spending time in bare, flat places makes me realize how soothing is the company of trees, how subtle but important is the rise and fall of the land on which we find ourselves.

How lovely it would be to have it both ways, to have the openness of the horizon and the coziness of trees — the greensward and the den, the faraway and the close-at-hand. It just occurred to me that I grew up in such a place, the natural savannah land of central Kentucky, the Bluegrass. No wonder I want it all.

(The sun slants low over the Osage orange trees on Pisgah Pike in Woodford County, Kentucky.) 

Deadlines

I've been alarmingly sedentary the last few days, working on a paper for class and other writing assignments, proving once again that one thing I don't have is ADHD.  

Yes, I can sit still for hours, noodling over some nuance, re-reading the paragraph I just wrote more times than is necessary, looking up an arcane fact I could live without. But the rabbit holes are tempting and I finally have time to explore them.  All of which is to say that I can sit still and write (or pretend to) for the entire day. 

And so ... thank God for deadlines. I've lived with them since I was in grammar school and had to write book reports and term papers, worked as a magazine writer and editor where they were so much a part of the furniture that I hardly gave them a second thought. Now I have deadlines to submit analytical essays and research papers. 

Of course, I deplore deadlines. I rail against them. But without them the learning — and the sitting — would be eternal. And we can't have that. 

Library in the Forest

I see them everywhere these days, around the 'hood and across this land. Along a street or in the woods. Little Free Libraries, they're called, and what an excellent idea they are: a way to share books, to offer them gratis, to provide a new home for books that need one. (I can imagine the volumes waving their arms, shouting "take me"!)

Several of my walking routes have little free libraries along the way, but this one seems most ethereal and unlikely, situated as it is along a woods trail that sees fewer walkers than most. For that reason I've found at least one gem in its reaches. 

Yesterday, no such luck, but it was fun to look, and to savor the very idea of a library in the forest. 

Weather Denier?

It was 35 when I woke up this morning, a temperature that I associate far more with winter than with fall. It's too early, I want to shout from the rooftops, knowing of course, that the weather gods will ignore me. 

But maybe I should not go gently into that (not) good night. Maybe I should be a weather denier, one who strolls through gales in shirt sleeves and shorts. 

Unfortunately, I'm just the opposite. Right now I'm wearing two layers of wool and one of cotton, and my warmest stretchy pants. One of my sweaters has a hood. I'm feeling a bit bulky ... but almost warm. 

(Looking at last week's beach shots to warm myself up.)

Ignoring the Roses

It's nothing personal, but sometimes I ignore the second bloom. Roses seem out of place this time of year — even a tease. 

Their petals are so smooth and soft, not fluted and dry like the chrysanthemum.They belong to spring, to longer days and shorter nights.

But here they are, a final benediction, a farewell to summer. So I try to take them philosophically, to see in their freshness a promise of spring.

Merry-Go-Round

It was almost 6 p.m. when we dashed down to Frying Pan Park, less than three miles from home. There was a carnival there, and the place was swarming with kids and parents, including some very special kids and their kiddos, our children and grandchildren. We took in the big trucks and avoided the cotton candy, but what we could not miss was the carousel.

Is there a better ride in the park? I say this as a reformed roller-coaster rider, my last foray on one of those contraptions giving me a headache so powerful I thought I was having a stroke. 

But give me the merry-go-round any time, and call it a merry-go-round, too, not a carousel, because that name carries with it the madcap quality of time's passage. Watching it last night, trying to pick out my children and grandchildren, it could have been my own girls who were squealing in delight, not their toddlers ... so quickly does time pass ... sometimes, it seems, even faster than the merry-go-round itself.

The Archive

I've been working on a writing project that has me dipping into the archive of posts I've been accumulating for years. I recently fished out one I wrote about a local historian who gave tours of the area and, for comic but also historical effect, passed around a 12-pound cannonball.

I found another about a two-room schoolhouse at a crossroads near here. It's been named to the Virginia Landmarks Register, thanks to the efforts of those who love and want to preserve it.

And then there was the post about buying last year's Christmas tree not from the oh-so-chi-chi place west of here that charges you a fortune to cut down their firs but from a small lot and a native Virginian, a place I'll be frequenting this year, too.

These and other local efforts have made the quality of life here so much better than it would be otherwise. And I can thank the blog — and the walking that inspired it — for many of these discoveries. 

(The Vale Schoolhouse, now on the Virginia Landmarks Registry.)

Changing of the Guard

The beach was only five hours south, and I was away only four days, but I returned to a world of autumn color, more than I'm used to this time of year.  A shot of cold air must have shocked trees into turning. 

It was a pleasant surprise, a suitable homecoming for mid-October, as if while I was gone there had been a changing of the guard.

As I write this post, a shiver of wind shakes yellow leaves from the poplar and the witch hazel. The leaves are dancing as they fall, swirling to earth, covering the lawn, which has seen better days.

Yesterday I left summer behind. Now ... it's fall. 

Punctuation

"I wandered lonely as a cloud," wrote William Wordsworth. Though his cloud floated "on high o'er vales and hills," mine was perched in a perfect blue sky above a sand dune. 

How solitary it looked, this cloud, how out of place, as if it had stumbled into the wrong act of a play. 

Where were its compatriots? There were other clouds in the sky that day, but nowhere near this one, which had dared to move inland instead of out to sea. 

Its out-of-placeness only emphasized its ethereal boundaries, its contrast of white with blue. It looked like the dot of an explanation point, punctuating a late summer day. 

White Noise

I write this post to the sound of waves pounding the shore. It's a sound I never grow tired of. Nature's white noise machine, its beating heart. 

Like a white noise machine, if you listen hard enough you find the rhythm in the randomness, the patterns in the passages. 

Like an inhale and an exhale there's a sucking in and a blowing out, a familiar back-and-forthness. Action, pause, reaction. A rush, a rustle, the life force. 

(Gulls in the surf, oblivious to the white noise?)

Being Present

Having spent time on the Gulf Coast of Florida the last 10 years, I've been spoiled by the sunsets, so many picture-perfect ones, the great orb sliding down just before dinner, a fully awake time to be sure.

On the Atlantic coast of North Carolina, you have to wake early if you want to see the sun rise. I didn't yesterday — but I did today. 

Rolled out early enough to see the first color streaking the sky, to wonder if the clouds would impede or dramatize the rising (the latter), to document the moment when the blood-red disc came out from behind the ocean, to feel a sense of relief then.

A line from Walden came to mind: "It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it."

OBX

The Outer Banks of North Carolina (known on sweatshirts and bumper stickers as OBX) is close enough that I should have visited long ago. But here I am now, which is all that really matters. It was a brisk welcome, sunny and cold, with wind that meant business and had busied itself burying the stairway to the beach.

Just a reminder of who's in charge, as if we need it after Fiona and Ian. 

The dunes here are protected but diminished, and seeing them yesterday, proud seagrass waving, was to feel an ache for all the beautiful things that grace our lives ... then disappear.

The Harbinger

It's happened here, and no wonder. The recent rain and chill have probably driven them to it. Or maybe it wasn't the weather at all. Maybe it's just their time.

Whatever the reason, the dogwood leaves have begun their march to extinction, their lovely russety turning. And berries have formed, their brightness a contrast to the subdued tone of the leaves.

I look at the dogwood a lot these days, since Copper likes to stand near it while we're outside. And it has become for me a harbinger of another season, one of burnished brightness and long, still nights. 

Dear Friends

Whenever I write a post these days I'm never far from a shelf of books. This was not the case when I worked in an office and would scramble to put some words down before my day officially began. Now I post at home, and there are walls of books throughout my house. 

I wonder sometimes what a younger person might say about these rows of books. My own children don't count; they've grown up here. But someone else, someone efficient and technical who's quite aware (as am I) that most of these books are available in digital or audio format and that in those formats they would take up a lot less space. 

Would they understand why the books themselves, the tattered covers, broken spines, dogeared pages, are so precious to me? Would they get that the books somehow become the ideas, characters and worlds they represent? Would they know how it feels to look to the left, as I'm doing now, and see not hundreds of pounds of paper and acres of felled trees, but a collection of dear friends?

Warmup Walk

It's unseasonably cold in these parts (it was the coolest October 4th on record here), but I'm as reluctant to turn on the heat in early October as I am to use the air-conditioning in May. The forecast is for more warmth to come; I'm holding out for that. 

Meanwhile, I'm re-familiarizing myself with the warmup walk. I took one of these yesterday, around Lake Audubon. The drizzle had stopped and waterproof-clad walkers were trudging through the late-afternoon chill, happy to be outside.

It was easy to rev up the speed, knowing that body heat is once again my friend. And it was good to know that the faster I walked the warmer it would seem when I got home. Because yesterday, that was the point of it all.

(Another way to feel warmer: picture Lake Audubon in June)

Of Hominids and Humans

I wasn't planning to read the entire Washington Post story today about Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo's Nobel Prize in medicine, but the more I learned the more captivated I was. Paabo's research into prehistoric DNA, a field he's credited with founding, has shone a light on ancient humans, including Neanderthals and a new species of early hominid he discovered, the Denisovan. 

Paabo's work has implications for human health in 2022: a genetic risk factor for severe Covid was inherited from Neanderthals, and 1 to 2 percent of non-African people have Neanderthal DNA. 

While the early hominid science was inspiring, it was the humanity of the scientist that touched me most. The photo accompanying the article showed a laughing Paabo being thrown into a pond by his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute. Paabo told reporters that when he got the call from Sweden at his home in Germany, he thought it was someone calling to tell him his summer house there had a plumbing problem.  

And finally, he gave a lovely tribute to his mother during his remarks. "The biggest influence in life was my mother, with whom I grew up," Paabo said. "It makes me a bit sad that she can't experience this day." 

(A Neanderthal skull unearthed in Israel. Courtesy Wikipedia.)

Rainy Weekend

The weather in my corner of the world makes me think of a slightly altered cliche — you can't keep a good climate down. The D.C. area is rich in sunshine, low in cloud cover and, at least for the last month or so, short on rain. Which means that last weekend's wall-to-wall showers were quite welcome.

I made soup, culled old files, and washed and dried clothes to give away. The rain and cloud cover gave me permission to stay inside. It lent a coziness to time's passage, blurred its edges. 

A quick glance at the weather forecast tells me we're expecting clouds and rain for the next two days. Who knows what I might accomplish?!