Fall

As our days shorten towards the dark dream of winter, a fresh shine radiates from the changing leaves. Sparkles linger longer on the water, and flowers open more slowly in the crisp dew-filled mornings. Each day of sunshine feels like a siren call to abandon our work in favor of play, like an accidental affair that induces us to remain under the gaze of the sun until the last ounce of light is replaced by the twinkle of the stars above.

This year, the first day of fall was one of those days, filled with sunshine and clear blue skies, the hazy smoke from distant fires cleared by yesterday's rain. I warmed myself in the morning sun, then sadly concluded it was time to begin my least favored autumn task, the washing and storing of the patio chairs. It's always done with a significance that feels like defeat, in stages, as I cannot bear the thought of an empty deck surrounded by leafless trees, an unwelcome finale to the activities of summer.

But know I must begin because I will soon lose my hose privileges. For after many years together, I've reluctantly come to accept that I'm married to a persistent weather monitor, determined to keep the ravages of heat and cold away from our home. Even though we have yet to experience one frozen pipe, there will be a morning, not too long from now, when it's declared that the temperature hovers far too close to 32, and the hoses will be suddenly whisked away for the duration of winter, long before I'm prepared to cease my garden chores.

Amidst the cleaning, I only ran into one wayward spider, which made me jump and shudder. It was clearly not as large as the monster that caused a ruckus with the boys across the street as they yelled out "Giant spider! Look at that baby! Get the stick!"  I listened to their drama as I let the chairs dry, then flipped them over on top of my head, and carried them to the garage in the style of a woman from Africa. 

Just four chairs remain, not enough for a party, but enough for now, to maintain the illusion that the waning days of sunshine are not yet spent. As the day moved into evening, I sat in one of the chairs, and relished the light, ignoring the frequent inquiries about when exactly dinner would be served. It could wait.

Back to school night

The math teacher refers to his giant scientific calculator as a "thing of beauty."

The English teacher talks about how they'll analyze Sylvia Plath poetry and read Fitzgerald, while a fabric Virginia Woolf doll holds up the papers on her white board.

We greet the neighbors in the hallway as we search for each classroom, and think it's not possible that we look any older than when we sat in those tiny kindergarten chairs thirteen years ago.

The economics teacher requires everyone to watch The Newshour and explains, "You may be bored to death watching PBS, but it's the real story and it will always be there because they don't sell commercials."

And the history teacher is practically giddy about next week's debate on who really caused World War I.

Passionate and funky people.

Fortunate kids. They have no idea.

Circumstance

Daisies seem suited
to their accidental home
in the neglected ground
that sits between the road
and the fence line

hapless fortune tellers
callously discarded
by eager schoolgirls
who pluck them clean
petal by petal

in order to know
whether the object
of their desire
loves them
or not.

Labyrinthine days

Last Thursday, violent gusts of wind ripped through the gorge tearing still-green leaves from their branches. Apples, chestnuts and crimson mountain ash berries were dropped abruptly at the base of their trunks. The sound was of a winter storm on the coast, strangely misplaced on a late summer day. The brightness and depth of the upriver view was obscured by smoke from fire devouring the dry grassland and forests to the east.

I was here to do a communications training for The Climate Trust.  We talked about biogas digestors and carbon sequestration and climate mitigation. Then we talked about how people get inspired when the story actually has something to do with themselves.  So we turned the conversation to cows who create electricity for our homes, and farmers who preserve the beauty of birds in flight for everyone to see.

But the most brilliant part of the afternoon was after. The training was held at Camp Menucha, which houses a beautiful brick and stone labyrinth in the center of a rose garden inside its vast treed grounds that stand high above the Columbia River. Ever since I walked my first labyrinth earlier this year, which I wrote about here, I've wanted to try the labyrinth at Menucha.

When I arrived, two women were sitting on the grass in the garden. I wanted to do this alone, so I continued along the trail into the woods where I found a glossy deep green oak leaf with thin celery-colored veins.  Cut from the tree too soon, it was larger than my hand and beautiful in its simplicity. As I circled back, the women had gone and I began to walk through with my new found leaf in my hand.

I noticed how rare silence is. That even in a dense circle of trees on the plateau of a high stone cliff, the sound of cars and trains from far below shuttled up to where I stood. I noticed it was no easier to concentrate the second time around.  My feet hurt. My shoes weren't right for the uneven stone surface. I was hungry. And I still had to resist the desire to look ahead to see where the path turned next.

But something happened. A phrase started passing through my mind. "What does it mean that we come and go." I have no idea where it came from, why it came, or what it really means. Yet it didn't feel like a question in search of an answer. It felt more like an invitation to accept the difficulty in finding meaning, to gather solace from the mystery of the uncertain. At least that's how I chose to interpret it.

On my way home, the low light lit up the horses and farmhouses on the old highway. As I turned the final bend, a perfectly brilliant sunset, searing red, dropped behind the forested hills. Radiance created from the destruction of the faraway fires. At home, I closed my leaf inside a book, wondering what will happen to its color and shine in the weeks to come.

Sky

This morning in Oregon, the world woke to a crystal clear September sky.  As I pulled away from the driveway, the contrail of a jet flying north glowed pink from sunlight that had not yet reached the horizon.

It reminded me of the silence of the day after. A silence you could feel. A silence that burned emotion into you. A silence that forced reflection.

We worried about the children, and tried to hide the truth. We forgot that they see everything with wide open eyes, and that what we don't tell them, they tell each other.

In their new world, they spent their playground days telling tales of Osama Bin Laden hidden at the bottom of the dark stairs outside the old one-room school house that still stood next door. And one afternoon, they closed themselves in the bathroom at the neighbors' house to secretly look at the photos in Time Magazine as though they were sneaking a peek at naked boys.

By time I drove over the river this morning, the sun had become a glowing red ball, rising in the sky. Another jet passed high above, its contrail now a pure white streak across the blue. The normalcy of a new day.

School days

Forty one years ago, with that ubiquitous name tag dangling from my neck and little pink glasses on my face, I climbed aboard Mrs. Gassner's big yellow school bus to begin life at Uplands Elementary. For the next 13 years, I started my day on the bus she ran with an iron fist that was pure gold on the inside, allowing only the rarest attempts at wayward behavior.

From Uplands Elementary to the junior high up the hill, to the high school just across the road, this tiny corner of the world was filled with the stuff I love -- people, activity, and new things happening every day. Now, as I pass by on my way to and from work, its subtle presence fuels my certainty that it's still a magical place.

This week as the summer sun lingered, and teachers and kids returned to their fresh, welcoming classrooms, no one arrived at Uplands Elementary. The blinds in the windows remain drawn. After 50 years of existence, the school has closed.

It was built in 1961, a low one-story building crafted from long, thin, orange-hued bricks.  The playground and fields are surrounded by a deep woods of maple and fir, much denser and darker today than in my day, when even then, we were certain that incidents of woe and doom surely happened within. But the true magic was always outdoors.

Every day, about ten minutes in advance of recess freedom, the secret negotiation began. High, middle or low. Which bar would we stake our claim to. Who got it first.  Who would take over in the middle. This was followed by the torturously slow walk down the hall, the push on the solid double metal doors and the sprint towards our chosen apparatus of exhilaration.

We secretly wore shorts under our dresses so we could hang upside down by our knees for minutes on end, swinging back and forth as wide as we possibly could before we daringly flipped our feet back over onto the ground. Then we'd fold our skinny hips over the unyielding metal, encircling the back of our legs with our arms to spin rapidly, over and over and over, dozens and dozens of times in a row.

Last week I followed the curvy, tree-lined road right up to the school because I simply had to know whether this all still existed. Before I even got out of my car, I could see that they were still there after all these years, darkened with age, but not even leaning one tiny bit.

It was amusing to discover that the high bar is not very high, no taller than me.  And the field that seemed so vast when we were out running and playing, now feels quite small and rather contained by the bordering woods. But I imagine, still the perfect size for any grade schooler with a wild imagination.

It's wistful to contemplate that the wondrous days of growing up will no longer happen at Uplands Elementary School except in memory. But today's children will undoubtedly find marvelous experiences to connect them to the place they now belong, and they'll never know the difference.

Holding thoughts

Yesterday I wrote thirteen letters
Inside my head

Then I tore them all up
Inside my heart

In case it's true
What they claim

That some things
Are better left unsaid.

Evening wandering

My children think this blog is boring, that all I write about is nature.  They boldly declare that anyone who would want to read it must lead a life just as uneventful as mine. I can only hope that thirty years from now, they will feel differently.

Particularly in these waning days of summer, I notice how the outdoors has become more important to me. The openness and simplicity mirrors the unconfined feeling of clarity I long for, making it inevitable, it seems, that the places and spaces where I feel most grounded have become a prominent theme.

Last week, while missing my friends terribly, I needed more than the outdoors of the backyard.  I needed nature. Even a promise of frozen yogurt -- and that the adventure would be brief -- could not temp my family to accompany me, so I took the short drive to my favorite nature area and embarked on a solo sunset walk.

As I paused to pick a few blackberries, my narrow shadow stretched far down the path, tuned in to the rustle of tiny creatures below, betrayed only by the movement of tufts far above their heads. The first berry was bitter. But it reminded me to choose more carefully so they come off the vine sweet with the taste of my grandma's farm.

The sun receded further, transferring its glow to the wild grass and cottonwood, in reassurance that the presence of light would remain even as the source journeyed on. Tall fir trees blackened while splashes of orange, lavender and pink were sent into the small clouds that framed a pure white sickle moon. Far off over the Coast Range, the afterglow lit a thin line of clouds brilliantly on fire.

Just as I was thinking the only interesting wildlife I might see were the nutria tumbling around feeding on greens in the pond, two great white egrets swooped in together over the grassland in search of their evening roost.  Before they continued their passage, they performed a magical dance in the little valley, their color profoundly vivid against the fading world.

I still took my anti-nature family to frozen yogurt.  On the way back home, the moon was absolutely stunning in the dark.  I said, "Look at the crisp moon against the indigo sky!" Ali quipped from the back seat, "Who thinks like that.  It's just not normal." Maybe that's why I need the outdoors.