Part One Autumn

This is my favorite time of year, the stretch between the middle of October until Thanksgiving. I love how each day I can see new changes in the landscape around me. The smells of leaves and the way it changes from sweet to hard. The loss of light steadies me, letting me know that it is time to dig in, create things, share with family, eat and cook lots. And so with that in mind Alder and I headed an hour south for a weekend with some of the women in my family for fair going and menu planning. There was also a stop with my godparents for a long talk about life on the porch.

A Blogging post

I've noticed ever since I started using Blogger Reader I have gotten pretty lazy about leaving comments on other people's blogs. Also there is no longer the excitement of opening up a blog I like to find that there is in fact a new post to read. So with these things in mind I am going to return my "reading list" to the side of my blog so I can once again start going to the blogs themselves. I know this isn't very thrilling for you to read but I felt like sharing.

If your wondering the date last night was wonderful. Abi I took your advice ;)

alone in the morning

The bright blue rental car is packed with three suitcases and they pulled out of the driveway about a half hour ago. Then Kevin left for work, the car protesting as he started it. Now the house is still I am alone with the autumn on a gray morning. From my desk I can see Morning Doves play on the wires across the street, dipping in and out of my view through the condensation. My hands are cold, making me think of the fingerless gloves I want to knit and through that to my friend who is pregnant across the pass. I wish I could be sitting with her talking about nothing like we did last summer. But the autumn is a time of selfish solitude for me, I love the transition from life to slumber I revel in the going darkness.

Tonight we will go on our first date since we moved from Colorado. Then we'll come home and tumble into bed, no one will join us in the middle of the night, no one will come in the morning and list all of our body parts and ask for kisses on his. But for one night and morning it is okay.

Saturday's Market

Kevin's parents are in town so I thought I would leave you with a few pictures from the farmer's market this past weekend.

Learning from each other

The other day Alder and I went for a hike in a near by state park. As we followed the short trail Alder and I made a game of finding the trail markers, every tree that had a dash of blue paint he would go up to and point out. We followed only the blue ones, leaving the gray ones when they were no longer on the same trees (the gray trail went off another direction). It was a fun game that lasted the entire mile of the short loop trail but it was much more than that too. Alder is learning an important skill in our lives. We go hiking a lot so knowing how to follow trail markers is important. Perhaps it the Jewish mother in me coming out but I do have nightmares (the awake variety) of loosing Alder in the woods.

But showing him how to find the trail is more than teaching him an important safety skill it is a way to include him in something that we do together as a family. Until now he had always either ridden in the backpack or just stomped through the woods finding pine cones and "nut-corns" (acorns) but the other day he was aware of the "nut-corns" as well as the painted markings. He would run from tree to tree, still stopping to explore the undergrowth but excited at each painted mark he found. Even today as we uploaded the pictures he pointed to this one as said paint.

At the time that I showed him the paint marks it was more of an after thought, something I did to quell my own imagination, but as we hiked on I realized that showing him the trail markers was a way of sharing something I loved with him, introducing him to my world, the same way that giving him small balls of yarn and some knitting needles to play with while I'm knitting includes him. He watches us and knows when we care about something, these are the things that he tries to join in. Some days I catch him standing in the same position Kevin does he standing meditation, quietly looking at the world around him.

But he isn't just a little mimic, there are so many activities I would have never thought of doing if it wasn't for him. I catch myself walking on the raised edges of sidewalks when I am walking to work alone, or counting motorcycles as I pass them in the car, these are his activities that I have now adopted. He has also taught me to slow down (a process that was begun by our cat five years ago) some day we don't leave the house. He can find hours of things to do in these five rooms. Or we may take an hour to walk six blocks, not because we are talking to others but because there is so much to explore, walls to walk on, slugs to follow as they make their way across the sidewalk, puddles to jump in until they no longer have any water left, and cats to watch as they stalk birds.

So while I am bringing him into my world he is doing same for me.

Longing

For the last few days I have been longing for snow. Usually I am excited for autumn and I am happy that it is here but something in me wants winter with it's long dark nights and white days. Mainly though I have been dreaming of the smell of snow how it smells like water but without the humid after tones. After a year filled with bright colors and shades of pink and orange I want the restfulness of whites and grays.... Or maybe it is the silence I crave, the year has been filled with noise and I am ready again to retreat into my head and empty out a little, spend more time making than planning. In winter I am less inclined to run all over the place and I need this pause.

There is a photo my father took years ago of cattails in the snow. The reeds are black against a white of late afternoon winter sun, that is what I want my world to look like. I want it to taste the way it tastes when I suck the water out of a fist full of snow and I want it to smell like fires and water and cold all at once.

Rather than being frustrated by my longing it invigorates me. It is the action verb winter not the noun.

Impressions of a new town 1

Most mornings clouds hang low over town, weighed down with the humidity of the river, only barely above the three steeples. In the clouds a quiet permeates the streets far later than in another town. The sounds of trucks laboring up Main street are absorber, leaving blatant holes where their noise should be. Well past nine the town is quiet.

Eventually the mist floats the river and evaporates or is absorbed into the hill that couch the river. Then the town shrugs off its silence. Trains heading south full of lumber, or north with scrap metal punctuate the the day with their rhythm while cars pausing at intersections leak music from their windows; sometimes the heavy beats of hip-hop compete with enthusiastic mandolins.