A visit to the farm

A glassy green thread of water flows through shades of brown, bronze, and gold below the bridge.  Figures of oak trees pierce endless sky over the prairie beside the railroad tracks.  The days are too short, the temperatures no longer balmy.  Winter lurks in the darkness that surrounds me as I drive home.

Will I see a deer like I did the other day near the hospital?  Lee thought it was fake, but I knew better, with rutting season in full swing.  This whitetail, at least an 8- point buck, was going to leap across the road at some point, just (fortunately) not as I was passing. 

Tonight there were no deer visible to my eyes, but they were there – in the fields, hills, and prairies I passed shrouded in darkness that seemed to swallow everything in its path.

About 6 pm, I got home from an afternoon of making soap – measuring and melting fat, watching a volatile chemical (lye) make distilled water come to a rolling bowl in a plastic container, then watching my friend thoroughly mix everything together and bake this soupy jade-colored concoction.  I got to help put it in molds although I didn’t stick around long enough for the soap to become solid.  It was interesting, but a bit scary working with lye.  It made me wonder what was in my scented gel soaps at home..

Dinner, death, and darkness

The wind bit at my ears as I rode my bicycle today.  It is one day past the middle of November and it seems as if our part of the world is tilting further and further away from the sun.  Darkness intrudes in the late afternoon hastening children to come in from their backyards and find something to do indoors.  The food is a comforting spinach quiche wrapped in a doughy blanket of hot brown crust.  Lee and Ez don’t like it but Scott does.  For a thin man, he is voracious and eats every meal like it is his last. 

For one of our friends, it was her last meal yesterday.  She didn’t drop dead, but slowly departed a painful earthly existence taking one last breath in the presence of her husband and children. 

It wasn’t fair for her to suffer, but it wasn’t fair for her to die.

All is dark and silent as blackness shrouds the Midwest with dots of light from distant stars.  Smokey, a gray tabby cat with black stripes, purrs on my lap.

No more waiting

Let me preface this by saying, I did not write this today.  It was sitting on the laptop waiting to be sent out.  Waiting... waiting.. alright I was thinking about it, but it was still waiting.. so I'm finally sharing it.

No more waiting..

I wish you were here to see the trees adorned in bronze with intermittent hues of scarlet, a blue sky painted overhead with clouds from heaven touching their limbs.  It is fall in the rolling hills of St. Charles, Illinois, a place that makes me less homesick for the foothills of Appalachia found in southern Ohio where I was raised. 

I took some photos of Pleasant Valley Conservation Area in Woodstock (attached) to give you a glimpse of the beauty here.   Autumn is not just a season for the eyes, but an invitation for all of the senses to feel warm sunlight punctuated by sharp winds, smell scents of wet leaves mingled with fungus, and taste apples so fresh that they have little of any resemblance to their store bought counterparts.