It's the Simple Things in Life you Treasure

There are pine nuts on the ground this week.

There are other signs of summer's waning, of course. There is a freshness to the morning, a coolness to the afternoon breeze – sweet after the heat of the last few weeks - and the subtle, telltale, rain-patter sound of dropping pine needles. But it was the tawny-golden, paper-winged pine nuts that stopped me in my tracks and made me thrill for the coming autumn. 

Because there were no pine nuts last year. Autumn of last year was a long, dry season, coming hard at the end of a long, dry summer, and a year that had no real winter to speak of. There was no ground water. Lawns withered. Wildflowers bloom briefly and faded in the heat. The shallow edge of the Lake turned desolate, drying out with a faint put persistant smell of rotting plants and stagnant water. There were little pockets of sickening pines, turning brown on the hillsides. By the end of the summer, all growing things had the aspect of refugees from a disaster, clinging to life on the edges of a dried-out world. Or perhaps that was just me, projecting my thirst for wet and cold onto the landscape around me...

And there were no pine nuts.

I cannot remember a single other autumn in which this happened. I’m sure that there have been others – perhaps even within my own lifetime – but I do not recall them. That lovely margin season between full summer, and the red-gold, life-scented autumn has always been marked by pine nuts. They come spinning down out of the sky, and land with the faintest little pat of a sound. By the middle of September, the ground is covered with them – neat, brown beads, plumb in their whirligig wings. We used to gather them as children, pulling the papers off gently, keeping the oval bit that grew around them intact; cracking them gently open between our teeth. They taste very little like the pine nuts one gets in the store. These are softer, sweeter – the pine taste both sharper and more subtle. They gleam pearl-white under their delicate aged-gold seed coats. 

Old habits die hard. I still feel the childish enthusiasm for gathering the nuts and eating them as I go for walks, or sit out in my yard. They are a fundamental part of Indian Summer for me – as vital to it as the chilled-red-wine quality of air. The lack of them last year saddened more than the brown dust and brittle clover that had been my yard all the long summer. 

But this year, there are pine nuts. Only a few so far. Summer has not quite let go its grip on us. Yet they are there, with their lovely little wood-bead and gold-paper casings. They still taste as sweetly of pine and the waning year as ever they did – sweeter, perhaps, for the year worth of wanting them. And perhaps for the sense of hope they engender. The drought is not over. Indeed, we may be fated to suffer it for some time more. But there is a promise of greener days in that embryonic life, a promise that with soft sun and gentle rain, they will become trees, and stand in the place of those that died of thirst. A promise that carries with it the sublimity of a Covenant - between Nature and God, and between God and Man: that if we just hold to our course, and be not afraid, He will bring joy and life to us again. 

The World Did Not End Today

So, those of you that were hiding away in you Apocolypse-proof caves, it is safe for you all to come out
again now.

There was a great storm blowing in this morning, though, so I work to a red sky. I could see it burning through the twining black boughs of pine outside the window. Nerd that I am, I looked at it and thought, "A red sun rises. Blood has been spilled this night." The wind was sweeping down the mountains, and roaring through the pines.... So I have had this song stuck in my head all day:

I spent most of the day humming it to myself, and singing it in as deep a voice as I could manage. I sounded nothing like a dwarf, of course, but what with the wildness of the wind and the roaring of the trees, I wanted very much to run away from work, and go adventuring.

On This Day We Celebrate:

The Marine Corps Birthday

The United States Marine Corps is 237 years old today. Marines are very big on Tradition and Decorum (at least at official functions) and so this day is quite often celebrated with a fancy dinner and dress ball. OO-rah! Semper Fi, Devil Dogs!

Padraig Pearse's Birthday

He was an Irish patriot, and also a teacher and a poet, who wrote rather lovely poems in Irish Gaelic. Here is a translation of one:

The Wayfarer

The beauty of the world hath made me sad,

This beauty that will pass;

Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy

To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,

Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,

Or little rabbits in a field at evening,

Lit by a slanting sun,

Or some green hill where shadows drifted by

Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown

And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;

Or children with bare feet upon the sands

Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets

Of little towns in Connacht,

Things young and happy.

And then my heart hath told me:

These will pass,

Will pass and change, will die and be no more,

Things bright and green, things young and happy;

And I have gone upon my way

Sorrowful.  

And I just noticed that this post makes my 100th post!

And since today was a beautiful cold day, with several inches of snow on the ground, a changeable sky that would be grey and foreboding one moment, and bright blue the next, and the last golden leaves of autumn still clinging to the bushes and the trees, I decided to take a picture of what I can see in the bit of yard outside my hobbit-hole of a house. Happy sigh.... I just love this time of year!

Autumn Is Changeable

My Dear Followers,

I know that you are not robots. I had no idea that Blogger thought it likely that great numbers of robots would be interested in a blog like mine, nor that it had taken it upon itself to sniff out these nefarious beings, and stop them at the door. I have had a stern talk with Blogger about it, and one should now be able to comment without having to prove one's humanity.

To my unspeakable delight I woke up to a world that looked like this today:

I am one of those odd people who absolutely glories in stormy weather. While most people are doing their best not to complain, I go about beaming from ear to ear, tromping about in the rain - I seldom go for walks in warm weather - and generally acting as though I have won the lotto.

The rain stopped for a bit in the afternoon, when a fierce, cold wind began to blow. The sun occasional peeked out from the clouds, and the air was full of dancing, golden leaves. It looked very Tolkien-ish:

If one cannot have storms, then a dramatic setting works nearly as well for keeping one cheery. The fierce, cold wind eventually drove away the sun, and by the time I was ready to come home from work, the world looked like this instead - but with more pine trees:

If there is anything I enjoy more than a good rain storm, it is a good snow, so my cup of joy was nigh to overflowing. It is supposed to keep on like this for the next couple days, which makes me feel very pleased with life at present, even if I am behind on my would count for Nanowrimo. I topped 10,000 words on it, in a fit of inspired determination, but it still lags. (So if the old blog starts looking rather unattended, it will be because I am attempting higher forms of literary abandon.)

How Beautiful A Day Can Be....

Every once in a while a day will come along that is as nearly perfect as it is possible for things to be on this Earth of ours. Today was just such a day for me. To begin with, the World Pipe Band Championships were being streamed live on BBC Scotland. The Worlds began at about 9 am British Standard Time, which would have put it at about 1 am here. I had to go into work at 8:30, so obviously pulling an all-nighter was not going to work for me. However, I did get up at a little past 5 and got in a solid couple hours of listening some really superb music, by the best bands in the world. This is the first time I've seen the broadcast for the competitions, and I found it tremendously exciting. Indeed, even if no other pleasant thing happened to me for the rest of the day, that glorious beginning put me in so fine a mood that it wouldn't have mattered.

In addition to getting a really good dose of piping, however, I also discovered that Celtic FC, out of Glasgow (my favourite football team*) beat out Dundee United 5-1 in their first serious game of the season. They beat Manchester United in a friendly match last week too, so they are off to a brilliant start.

And my own piping practice today went like a dream. I have been struggling with my pipes all summer, and practices have mostly been something of a purgatory for me. Today, however, everything seemed to lock in. I cannot remember the last time I sounded as decent as I did today, nor the last time that piping was so much fun. Och, there were still issues, don't get me wrong. I have a fiddly reed that takes forever to settle in when I'm playing, and which is highly sensitive to the slightest variances in pressure, so I was still cutting out a little bit, and the tuning, while acceptable, was not all it could have been... but, oh, I had the tunes, and my fingers were doing what I wanted them to do, and the over all sound was really very presentable indeed. I felt like a million dollars by the end of that!

Last but not least, when I was going for a quick stroll during my afternoon break, I passed a birch tree that shed a couple very lovely golden leaves on me. It is too early for autumn, and, indeed the day was quite warm. I think that this particular tree is changing colours more because of the abuse it has endured most the summer, with drain work and road work disturbing it continuously, rather than because it is a herald of cooler days. But the leaves were very fall-like, and as I paused in a golden shaft of sunlight to look at the birch in surprise and delight, a little breeze wove around us, and the lovely, intoxicating bitter-spice smell of autumn came wafting from it, making my happiness complete.

* soccer for those of you who think I meant a sport involving tackling and massive shoulder guards.

On the Weather

For the last couple months, we have been getting a good deal of snow, and rain, and rain-and-snow mixed together. There is hardly a week goes by without some sort of weather, usually quite cold weather. For me, this is not a big deal. I happen to like snow and rain, and much prefer cold weather to hot. I might admit that a bit of sun and warmth is quite pleasant for a change, but since we actually have had a few days this week featuring those qualities, I cannot say I was disturbed at the snow we got today.

I rather think, however, that I might be the only person left in town that is not fed up with the weather. When the rain started early in the afternoon, my co-workers let out a unanimous groan. When the rain turned into quite a serious snow storm, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. "Are we ever going to have spring?" was the despairing cry I heard quite often today. By contrast, during the late afternoon, when both rain and snow stopped, and the golden sun broke through the black and fantastic storm clouds, the populace rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

The best reaction probably came from a small, handsome Mexican child, who was playing with his father in the Children's Section of the library. He saw the sun coming in at the window, and stood stock still, gazing at it in awe. He exclaimed fervently, "It's a miracle!"

Spiders

For some reason (probably because of the variable weather) a rather unreasonable number of scary brown spiders have been coming out of the woodwork, and crawling creepily about the house. They are very spiderish spiders, with fat, squishy, somewhat bloated bodies, of an unhealthy brown shade, equally alarming legs, and a pair of hairy things bristling from where their mouths ought to be. They are large, at least by the standards of the spiders I am used to, and move in a disturbingly predatory fashion. They look like nothing quite so much as miniature Shelobs, in brown rather than grey. I am not much given to the customary yelling and leaping when I am startled by something. I tend to make a single extremely small noise, and draw abruptly back from the startling object. Sometimes I go so far as to place a hand over my mouth, but by and large, I am rather undemonstrative about it. However there is something about these creatures that seems to completely unnerve me, and I am beginging to do little half-leaps of alarm, and go on at a great rate, in a high pale mouse-voice: "Ooooh, oooh, spider! Oh, they're horrible! Just awful!"

The proper thing to do, of course, is the dispatch the things and be done with it. At the very least, I ought to catch them under a cup, and release them outside, where, with any luck, they will crawl into a lingering snowbank, and freeze to death. Unfortunately, I have a greater horror of the squish the spiders make when they are stepped on, than of the spiders themselves; and, dreadful as they are to look at, the idea of getting near enough to one to catch it fills my mind with terrifying and highly unlikely images of them leaping off the floor and getting on me. I might be able to sneak up and cover one up with a cup, but I cannot bring myself to slide a card beneath and remove him from my dwelling place. As a matter of fact, there is one trapped beneath a coffee cup at this very moment. Hopefully, it will die of something on its own, and soon too, because otherwise, I shall have to figure out what to do with it.... or just plan on doing without that cup for a very long time.

Winter Hath Come Again

This has been an odd winter, one that cannot decide if wants to go down as a bitterly cold year, or an abnormally warm one. The snow came early, and Thanksgiving was memorable for near-record cold, and for surprisingly heavy snow fall. This sort of weather continued on and off through the first week or so of January, when there was a sudden, furious shifting of weather patterns, leading to weeks and weeks of too warm, spring-like conditions. Most people rather enjoyed it, but I am a winter-lover myself, and found myself going rather stir-crazy for want of some proper weather. I had just about despaired of it, when conditions shifted furiously back again. For the last couple weeks, we've had a return of the cold, and a series of big storms, each dropping a foot or two of light, powdery, beautiful snow on us, then clearing for a day or two so that we are able to get ourselves properly dug out before the next one came. I have been enjoying the wild weather tremendously. Here I am, on my way to work:

Summer Is Icumen In...

After a number of half-hearted false starts, and a lovely, long rainy spring, summer seems at last to have come to the mountains, with its golden abundance of hot, California sun. The sky is a dazzling infinity of blue. The pine trees are living, verdant flames. The clouds - if clouds there ever are - are great, billowing masses, bleached whiter than snow, and so full of light, that there is no shadow upon them, merely valleys of lesser brilliance. The smell of summer is here, the heavy incense of sun-warmed pine, and the waterful scent of newly mown lawn. The majority of the population are winter-wearied, and welcoming in the summer with wild exultation.

I am not one of them. Aside from the undeniable beauty of the season, I must admit that I do not see the appeal of summer. There is the heat, to begin with. Admittedly, here in the mountains, the heat is not so oppressive as it is in the rest of the state. Still, there is a certain burning edge to the sun that I find intolerable. It seems to sit upon me, like a malevolent presence. I wilt and droop and long for rain. The house gradually warms up, so that by the end of the day, it is far too stifling to sit indoors. However, if I decide to go out into the lovely cool of the evening, then there are the mosquitoes to reckon with. They are legion. They do not attack all at once, but take turns rushing in on me, and biting where I least expect it. Eventually, the frustration of slapping at them every few minutes drives me back inside, to the muggy atmosphere, where the fans, going full tilt, are attempting to stir some freshness into that unreasonably stagnant air.

Furthermore, summer in the mountains - especially the early part of the summer, when the first heat comes - brings that yellow plague: the pollen. The pine trees are pollinating, and the air is thick with a fine, sticky yellow dust. It goes everywhere. A newly-washed car will look like an abandoned derelict within mere hours. It sifts through screens and even the most obsessive neat-nick will be unable to keep the house looking fresh and polished. There is a long, yellow bank of the stuff floating along the shoreline of the lake. Those who are allergic to it are unbelievably miserable, and even those who are not suffer from dry eyes and a scratchy throat from breathing it in, day after day. It goes away, eventually, as do all crosses, no matter how eternal they seem, but it takes a while. A good rain helps, but good rains are rare in California during the summer. Oh, and I do long for it! For the freshness that it brings, and the smell of it, and the wet, cool touch of it. I dreamt about it on the first hot day of of the year: of a great, gusting wind and fat, wet drops, falling with a heavy, deliberate splash.

Furthermore, I find the long, glorious succession of perfect, sunny days to be dreadfully boring. I like a bit of drama in my weather. I like there to be some play between sun and cloud, and the shift of persepective it causes in the landscape. I like wind, and the stronger the better. I like lightening and thunder and snow and fog. My eyes grow tired of the bright, brilliant colours of summer, and would have the rest of a soft, grey day. I look forward to autumn, the way most people wait for spring, when I shall be delivered from the monotany of beautiful weather.