Fall has fell!

Looks like snow is just over the horizon.  We’ll have some melty stuff tomorrow morning, but by Wednesday, there could be inches sticking to the ground.  I’m gonna miss the fall.  Nothing can bring tears to my eyes as readily as the shimmering yellows on a hillside covered by aspens in autumn.

My father's pursuit of the perfect aspen 'colored' my youth.  Many a weekend in the fall, my dad would grab his camera and his family and drive off in the late afternoon up to the high aspen-rimmed meadows of the Cedar Mountain.  Just to the northeast of Cedar Breaks National Monument we'd park in a meadow and begin our search for the perfect dying aspen.  The tree had to be the absolute epitome of gold and the sky a deep blue above it.  The sky was only right in the direction opposite the sun early in the morning (to the west) or just before sundown (to the east).  We'd all start off in different directions toward one stand of aspen or another.  We'd walk and look and walk some more.  If one of us spotted a possibility, we'd whistle a signal for Dad to come and check it out.  In this way, hours and days of my early life were spent.  Many perfect trees were spotted and photographed; so many that years ago when my mother and I went through old slides to catalogue and store them, there were more than ten carousels of nothing but Cedar Mountain aspens. 

Those early years taught me (without my realizing it, of course) more about light and its effect on color than any of the formal art education I received since.  I also learned to love the variations in light from early morning to night and from season to season.  Perfection is achieved only because of the changes brought about by movement through time.  I'm still trying to gain a better intellectual understanding of this lesson, since I have so visceral a knowledge of its importance.

Now the hillsides above my deck are losing their colors.  The maple reds, oak golds and high aspen yellows are all browning out, leaving drab patches in an otherwise deeply colored tapestry.  I miss them all already.

MONDAY, ALL AT ONCE

Monday came crashing in way too early this morning.  Awake at 4 and unable to get back to sleep, I got up and went over to the high school pool for some laps.  I always feel much better after a swim, but thats really hard to remember at some ungodly hour of the morning, the only time the pool isn’t filled with raucous teens.  From 5 to 6:30 we old folks have it all to ourselves; a group of gray and white-haired women ‘aquacizing’ in the shallow end; several of us using the lap lanes and a passel of old guys paddling listlessly in the deep end.  ‘Oldies’ on a tape player provide some low background ‘ambience’, giving rhythm to the ladies exercises.  All the laughter and gentle joshing is muted to undertone by limbs slapping the water’s surface in the lanes. 

I move slowly up and down my lane; usually sharing with a much better swimmer who I know only as “the woman from Mantua”, a tiny town up the canyon from here.  She’s in before 5 (there’s a cadre of 2 or 3 who are allowed to help open the place) and out not long after I get in, usually at 5:30.  We exchange smiles and nods and go on about our morning rituals.  For her that’s several leisurely laps with the kickboard, then many laps of more seriously vigorous swimming, then back to the kickboard to cool down.  For me, a slow lap or two with the kickboard, then a ‘sociable breast stroke’, so dubbed by an old fellow I swam with as a very young woman.  He called it that because he kept his head above water all the time so as to gossip with all us other swimmers.  So, after some head above water breast stroking, I’m back to the kick board for the duration, usually about 45 minutes in all.  I feel lucky to have access to the pool and lucky I can still get around as easily as I do. 

Coming out into the dark morning, the moon was a huge crescent lying up there on its back.  It’s colder today than it’s been so far this fall.  A hint of winter creeping down from the mountaintops.  There’s been snow up there already, but it hasn’t stayed with us.  To the south, the tallest of the Wasatch peaks have accumulated some feet of snow, but our shorter, less massive mountains aren’t holding onto their’s just yet. 

First Post

It’s autumn.  My favorite time here at the northeastern edge of the Great Salt Lake.  The mountainsides are red, gold, yellow and bronze with dying leaves.  After a very wet spring and summer, the scrub oak and maple on the foothills are perfuse, gaudy even, creating a soft tapestry of colors.  I’m hoping to have the grace to die so beautifully.  With a big splash of jubilance. 

The pinyon pine nuts are showing up at the roadside produce stands along with pumpkins and other squash, as well as cobs of colorful dried ‘Indian’ corn.  I look, in vain so far, for chili ristras.  While there are thousands of Mexican seasonal farmworkers here, the anglo majority does it’s best to ignore them.  So no ristras on offer.  I’d love a string of dried red chilis to brighten up my kitchen, but no dice. 

The birds, sparrows mostly, but some goldfinches and the red-headed house finches as well, are cleaning up the seeds that have spilled from all the plants in our garden.  The wild Italian parsley that covers our front yard is especially seedy this year and sparrows swoop in squads onto it, covering the still bright green foliage with their drab browns and grays.  We also have numerous stands of sunflowers, some still petaled, but most just brown heads, bent by the heavy seeds.  These the gray-blue iridescent scrub jays dive after, screaming their claims to the best of the seeds.  When we had our roof replaced last fall, the workers discovered lots of caches of seeds the jays had made for their winter subsistence.  New, well nailed shingles are harder for them to stash food under.  At least that seems the case, since I’ve not heard them scratching and pounding away up there as is usual at this time of year. 

We’ve lived here almost ten years now.  Both my husband and I moving headlong in to our dotage.  Having spent most of our nearly 40 years together in cities, this small town of 20,000 souls seems a good place to ease into agedness.  Edged to the east by the majestic Wasatch Mountains and to the west by the Great Salt Lake, our town is quite lovely.  In addition, there’s a very large bird refuge on a freshwater bay appended to our inland sea that adds a touch of the exotic.  Avian visitors from South America join us in summer and from the earth’s extreme northern tier in winter.  Pelicans, all kinds of geese, ducks, loons and other water birds are with us year round, as are dozens of varieties of raptors.  But bright-feathered southern immigrants pass by on occasion, a flash of Carmen Miranda brightness against our deep blue northern sky.  Their names remain unknown to me.  I could find out who they are and from whence they come by stopping at the refuge’s visitor’s center, but somehow that would deprive them of their mystery.  Until moving here, I hadn’t realized how fascinating birds’ lives can be. 

My husband built a trellis and bird platform outside my home office window so I can observe the birds.  He put a scarlet-flowered trumpet vine on the trellis, attracting hummingbirds from very early spring to early winter.  They are delightful creatures.  The vine arches over the platform, creating a bower for them to rest in.  Until this trellis view, I’d never seen hummingbirds up close, nor at full stop rest.  They sparkle when they fly or hover, but at rest they lose their spangled iridescence and turn quite dark.  While flying into the trumpet flowers, they provide dashes of brightness against the deep green of the vines.  As do the finches: gold and red streaks across my window. 

Well, that’s all for today.