Little Bang Theory

Rainy Day, Dream Away. September 28, 2008

Autumn in the Berkshires wears two faces.

There’s the crisp, cool face of brilliant stars viewed through dry air, hillsides of fire and ice, collars raised against stiff breezes, views which stretch past the near hills to the curved horizon.

And then there’s the pewter face of autumn, its hair beaded with droplets of mist, ruffled by driven fog, knee deep in earth tones, soaked to its bones, drawing in, getting its act together for the coming winter.

Today was that latter kind of day, drizzling, leaden, dark.

But somehow, it drew me out, closing the door quietly on my sleeping daughter and her sleeping fiancé, coaxing my dying van injudiciously woodsward, along a washed out gravel road, winding up into the State Forest which so convincingly surrounds me that I surrender to it daily.

The roadside stream was flush with rain, not like the torrents of Spring, but rather filled to satisfaction, like a sated diner:

I rolled my pants up to my knees, took off my socks and waded into the water in my rubber shoes, a hill-town staple for gardeners, and began to notice the small things, the details, the reason I bought a camera.  The moss was loving this, the twilight of its existence, perhaps its final greening before the dessication of winter, before its retreat beneath a blanket of white:

The ferns were loving it, catching falling stars as fast as the overarching maples could cast them off:

Fungi leapt at the chance to produce one more batch of spores, please, just give us one more chance…

Even the stones were reveling in it, the wetness, the surface tension, the rightness of the rain:

The day stretched on, and my woodland stream, my gravel road led my astray, kept me out, delayed me from my Duties as Dad.

I’m Sorry, Elder Progeny, for the delay.  Sometimes I don’t know how long my journey will be; I only know that I have to make that journey.