Nonetheless, I didn't entirely give up writing. I wrote at work, of course: endless revisions to long-overdue reports, and briefing notes on almost every subject. But I also found time to make a few entries into a notebook.
October 12, 2012.
On a chill autumn day, low, broken clouds shuttle over the city, shedding a few, fat snowflakes. The foliage peaked in color last week, before a windstorm blew through and began stripping the trees down to their grey bones. Another week or two should see them standing naked.
I have not kept up my Seasons blog. Our desktop computer resides in a large plastic bag, in bed-bug quarantine. Sue and Tom make do with their old laptops, and Ben has a new laptop. I, however, have no readily accessible computer, and I've felt strangely reluctant to remedy the situation. Until recently. As the season begins to accelerate, I find myself wanting to write.
While I kept by head down at work and at home, September passed like a fleeting glimpse from a car window. Summer became autumn... and, today, a harbinger of winter. I don't feel ready for winter. I feel cheated of time. Perhaps writing of the seasons also slows them down and gives them more substance. An interesting twist on General Relativity.
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Today I picked up a copy of Henry Beston's book, the outermost house. St. Martin's Griffin just reprinted it in celebration of the 75th anniversary of its publication. Already, just into the first couple of chapters, I can see again the dunes and beaches of Cape Cod and Rhode Island, where I spent two years in my teens. I can feel the warmth of hollows behind the dunes, late on an autumn or spring day, out of the sea wind, with the sun lying golden on the sand. I can recall the tidal creeks of the inlets, cut sharp into the sandy, grass-bound flats. During the ebb and flood, the water streamed swift through the narrow channels, sweeping bits of weed and flotsam. During the slack, my brother and I poled through the creeks with my father, chasing blue crabs. I recall the ceaseless sound of the waves, the hiss of grass and sand, the cries of the gulls.
Beston writes of a connection to the natural world that resonates with my own. And he writes beautifully.
"The world to-day is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. In my world of beach and dune these elemental presences lived and had their being, and under their arch there moved an incomparable pageant of nature and the year. The flux and reflux of the ocean, the incoming of waves, the gathering of birds, the pilgrimages of the peoples of the sea, winter and storm, the splendor of autumn and the holiness of spring -- all these were part of the great beach. The longer I stayed, the more eager was I to know this coast and to share its mysterious and elemental life; I found myself free to do so, I had no fear of being alone, I had something of a field naturalist's inclination; presently I made up my mind to remain and trying living for a year on Eastham Beach."
He writes of animals, in an oft-repeated quote.
"For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they moved finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth."
Oct. 13, 2012.
Waiting at the corner of Slater and Bank in a chill rain for a bus too long coming. Huddled against a pillar, just outside the rain. People drift to the stop in one and twos and threes. A pretty, young woman with jet black hair and a too thin coat pulls her arms around herself, snugging close her oversized purse.
October 14, 2012
Last night's chill rain continues into today. It soaks into the city, floating autumn to the surface like fallen leaves floating on a puddle. In the heart of Centretown, most of the trees hold their colors: orange, gold, brilliant yellows, fully saturated in rain. As I crossed the footbridge, I stopped to admire the raindrops dangling precariously from the bristle tips of young Freeman's maple leaves planted beside the ramp. Crossing a slick street, I admired a leafy quilt glowing against the black trunk of a large sugar maple in an adjacent yard. The streets seem sparse and quiet. A few figures twirl umbrellas along the sidewalk. Cars hiss past in solo doppler approach and retreat.
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Henry Beston writes:
"The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. I have heard them all, and of the three elemental voices, that of the ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and varied."
October 16, 2012.
Today felt like the onset of winter. I recoiled from it as I stepped outside: chill without the autumn damp and scent of mould; a paler, more sterile light. I zipped my jacket to the neck. As I walked to work, the students crossing the footbridge bore winter coats and toques. The canal has drained, revealing the detritus of the previous season, and long, stringy weed. Some color remains in the trees above the pathway; but it seems more sad than cheerful.
The shoulder seasons -- late autumn and early spring -- can feel like joyless times. They linger dully in the joints, a premonition of changing weather. Perhaps the lack of any true, Indian Summer has contributed to the sense of melancholy.
The sun slips lower, even though we still lie two months away from its nadir. I noticed it on Saturday, as I toured my beaver deceiver sites. Looking south at noon, I could see the sun a scarce couple of hands breadths from the trees bordering the Kizell Wetland. It gave little warmth and a thin light.
October 28, 2012.
I have the house to myself for most of this weekend. Sue has gone to a yoga retreat with Kate Potter, and the boys have gone to their other homes. A mild drizzle fell all day, slicking the streets and burnishing the golden leaves across the back parking lot. I drove to the yoga studio this afternoon, to take Sue an item. The trees stood black against the hillsides, here and there a clutch of white birch standing forth. Mists wreathed the hilltops. It reminded me of the Gulf Islands.
December 8, 2012
Dawn Smith died yesterday at 4 AM, at home, with her family. As always, I find it odd to think of the world with my friend gone. I recall that the Navajo maintain that the rite of adulthood remakes the world with the new man or woman; does the death of someone remake the world without them?
People pass outside the windows at Starbucks. Fat snowflakes fall and vanish on wet pavement. Cars and busses grumble and hiss along the street. I watch a woman disembark from a bus. She shrugs a backpack over her down coat. Her hood covers a bright, red toque. Our eyes meet briefly as she turns the corner and disappears. She carries her own world with her.
I don't believe that we die, any more than we live. We are the threads that rise to the top of a tapestry, carry on awhile adding our color to the story, and then submerge to support the rising of the next thread. We feel the disappearance of our friends' threads more than the impending loss of our own. But we can look back at their place in the story, and we can trace their influence in the threads that follow.
