Fall Pilgrim

In Oregon you can usually count on the summer to float softly to the ground. It’s sunscreen-wearing, ripe-tomato weather and then one day you find yourself sweeping pine needles and arranging gourds by the doorstep. But this year summer evaporated into thin air. The rain came early. Ryan’s Linda died and we couldn’t, wouldn’t believe it. We sat on benches in his back yard and laughed together and cried so much, the dogs cocking their heads at us convinced we’d all lost our minds. Ryan had purple circles under his eyes. We wished we could make it all better for him. As we left his house, we pinned tiny enamel owls to our lapels so we would always think of Linda. The pins flashed in the sun and we sent up silent blessings to the ones we love. Out there in the world. Fragile. Brave. Alive.

During the days before Halloween, the cold bore down and blustered and blew. In the morning, there was ice in the backyard dog bowl. Of a bitter Tuesday night we went to see Built to Spill play and Doug’s sweet, warm voice cheered us from within. The encore played, the heaping leaf piles took to the wind, the cold was furious on Russell Street and our car was parked much too far away.

Now all we do is sit and talk and think and watch. The dark season is here. I have started reading more. I read Annie Dillard’s the Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a Pulitzer winner published before I was born. Says she about about the quiet and calm of November: “The dark night into which the year was plunging was not a sleep but an awakening, a new and necessary austerity, the sparer climate for which I longed. The shed trees were brittle and still, the creek light and cold, and my spirit holding its breath.”