Unnecessary Sun

This morning was one of those fall days for which poets pine in the dead of summer. Grey skies, promised rain, enough wind to carry the echo of a child's shouts from the covered bridge down the hill. The trees around my mother's house have forgone conventional oranges and reds and dolled up their leaves in brilliant yellows. In autumn, the sky is unusually decisive: no shades but deepest blue and coldest white, and this morning, despite the overcast light, the air shone with the radiance of the trees. The sun may be regarded as superfluous on days such as this.

I have moved alot lately. As much as I want to explore, I find myself missing the last few years when I had a place of my own. Since beginning my most recent sojourn, my earthly possessions have been spread between Northampton, MA, Brattleboro, Burlington, Dummerston and Hinesburg, Vermont. I'm not sure where "home" is: when I'm at my Mom's place, I think I need to go back to Burlington for some things but then remember most of my stuff is piled in boxes in the next room. For most folks my age, nomadic living is a luxury taken for granted. But for a closet homebody like myself, it's a challenge. I'm learning to let go: to loosen the grip on my worldly goods, to be flexible.

I'm not used to the season yet--and the weather varies dramatically between Western Massachusetts and the Champlain Valley. There's a special place in my heart for fall, perhaps because I have such great memories of working on the farm: outside it would be dark and raining, but I would sit in our farmstand surrounded by apples, syrup and pies, huddled by the lamp for warmth, writing my first serious stories. This is when I knew I wanted to be a writer. Nowadays, I notice the smaller things about the season. A faded bumblebee staggering across the deck. A half-cleared acre of land with a hand-written sign leaned against some sort of DIY-size construction vehicle, "For Sale," and I wonder if it's the equipment, the land, or both. Absolutely bitter cold mornings. (My mother reminds me to close the window, but in the Hinesburg farmhouse where I'm staying now, it's freezing--windows or no windows.) It's drafty and rumored to be haunted, but the only thing going "bump in the night" is my toe hitting the drum set and my hands feeling along the wall in search of the bedroom door. Also, the water is frigid and it takes five minutes to heat up enough to be safe for human contact!

In Dummerston, my friend, Diane, from the Language Institute comes for a visit before returning to Minnesota and we stomp through the woods that connect my Mom's land with the now-derelict Maple Valley Ski Area. I'd never been that far along the trail, and my Mom led us bush-wacking past sap lines, beech trees, and lots of mushrooms. We stack wood under the lean-to we rebuilt at the end of the summer. Mom has a shed on the property that would have been a playhouse for us if we'd grown up here. She says I can store my bike there for the winter. "I've never been in here," I say as she opens the door. She's surprised. Inside it's warm and smells woody--as if summer has been trapped inside its four thin walls. I love this season. There are apples and pies everywhere. To train for her triathlons, my Mom crosses the road and swims upstream under the covered bridge. She is a good swimmer, strong, but she drifts downstream, an inch at a time, against the current. In the house, the walls are teeming with lady bugs.