Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, unsolicited opinions about love, religion, economics, and politics should be kept silent and allowed to fall off of the edge of the earth with hate, anger, religion and its mass wasting disease, weapons of mass destruction, excess adverbs and unrequited love.
Today is either the first day of autumn or the last day of summer; I can never remember. But if I missed the equinox yesterday or if it's today I will still miss it anyway due to rain and clouds hiding the Continental Divide in Glacier national Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. I decided to try to get back on Highway 2 in Kalispell. Highway 2 is the highway I took across most of Washington state. Thanks, many appreciative thanks to Tom and Jo Graff in Missoula for storing my bicycle and trailer. I trust that the Marquis de Sade and his humpbacked companion didn't take up a lot of room in your garage.
Fall is my favorite season, at least most of it. I love the part without a lot of snow; the part with changing leaves; cool evenings warm days; and most of all I like the smell. It brings back memories of the scent of contentment my grandparents had. The crops were in, wheat had been traded for flour, the lambs and calves had been sent to market, and the deer and elk, fattened on our hay fields all summer watched us warily for signs of predation. The autumn air has the scent of accomplishment and the breeze has enough chill in it to make us aware of measurable change. I'm not afraid of change, rather I embrace it. I remarked to one of the kids that I was fascinated by the process of growing old. I could do without the bad knees, memory issues, etc! But even these are part of my observations. I look forward to the double hip replacement I have scheduled later in the fall, if for no other reason than to see what I will be like when I recover. The doctor told me I would be less bow-legged and consequently taller!
Fall is the season of fattening, of eating voraciously to build up fat reserves to make it through the harsh winter in a cold cave. It is primordial and I wonder if putting most of the fattening holidays--Halloween, Thanksgiving, Xmas, my birthday--in the fall and early winter was accidental or random. I told my therapist once: "I get the urge to go down to the stream behind the house and wait for spawning salmon. I salivate from the primordial memory of the taste of salmon roe, pink flesh. I empathize with grizzly bears." He took a long look at me and sighed. I wonder what he will say when we next meet when I tell him or ask him if it is weird for a practicing vegetarian to love fly fishing (catch and release of course) and having strong urges to gorge on salmon.
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