Leaves have been flying through the air here these last two or three days -- sun and clouds trading off unpredictably, a stiff, spirited breeze blowing, sweeping shards of orange and yellow off trees in rustling waves of motion. Trees once reluctant to turn are now showing color, others already well along now show bare branches.
Classic New England autumn stuff.
Over the last three or four days, birds from more northerly locales have been making pit stops here on the way south. Out doing some work off the far end of the house about three afternoons back, I heard a robin's call, something that's been absent in these parts since mid-August. The next morning robins were everywhere, spread out across the expanses of grass around the house, hunting for breakfast. Fueling up for the next leg of the ride. Other birds have been around, too, warblers and what looked like barn swallows. All of a hardier breed than the buggers that summer here.
And monarch butterflies have been passing through, wandering by in the afternoons, alighting on the red hawkweed blossoms that have sprouted up these last weeks in a final, late-warm-season binge.
Beautiful, all of it, a kind of affecting beauty that goes far beyond the visuals that draw crowds of leaf-peepers to Vermont at this time of year like camera-wielding iron filings to a mountainous, multi-colored magnet. (Yes, I know, it's a weak, garish metaphor. I know. And I don't care.)
Meanwhile, I managed to find my way into a local poker game (yesterday evening, in fact), something I haven't been a part of for a while -- three, close to four years. There was a period there when that kind of thing was a regular feature of my life. (I said something at last night's game about a three or so year period, but it went on far longer than that in long, sometimes fitful spells, with a couple of different groups; far longer still if evenings spent playing hearts with some cohorts are tossed into the mix.) Up until my life shifted itself up here from Cambridge, Mass., then across the Atlantic.
They were always competitive affairs, those games, but the point was a good time, get-togethers with conversation, laughter, all that, not raking in megabucks or grinding one's opponents into the dust. Meaning that while there may have been the occasional cigar ignited or beer bottle tipped up, the events were low-stakes -- nickels, dimes, quarters rather than dollar-and-upward demo derbies.
There is a high-stakes game of many years standing up here, in a neighboring town, one with which David Mamet has been associated, one with an aroma of testosterone. The game I weaseled my way into last night was a coed deal, all folks I'd never met before apart from the person who provided me entrée (the very nice person who provided me entrée, an attractive, intelligent woman who's recently become part of the weekly Spanish-speaking get-together I'm part of when I'm on this side of the Atlantic).
[more to come]
rws 6:18 PM [+]