Month: November 2022

Follow the yellow brick road!

Autumn leaves don’t fall, they fly.  They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.

-Delia Owens

A carpet of yellow and tan leaves covers the tarmac of the rail-trail — oak and maple mostly, but there are also, in places, birch, aspen and black walnut.  The colorful quilt softens footfalls, but it also adds a crisp rustling to the sound of passing feet and paws.  There are so many dry and brittle leaves on the ground off-trail that it’s easy to hear a miscreant squirrel as he bounds through the undergrowth.  The trees from which the leaves fell still have some left, even a few that are green, but their bony skeletons are definitely poking through the foliage.

Looking out over the landscape across a clearing at Fort Meadow Reservoir, I can see lumpy vistas of green, yellow, orange and red undulate off into the distance.  A hard freeze has yet to come, but we have had temps in the early morning of 32℉.  That’s cold enough to start the arboreal shedding, but not enough to completely denude the deciduous trees.  The green I see now is largely due to conifers, trees that during the summer are completely overshadowed by their leafy cousins.  Today is warm, by fall standards, with a high of 69℉.  It’s the kind of day that you can enjoy while being in your shirtsleeves and yet still be immersed in all the splendor the season has to offer.

I’ve always liked the fall.  To me, it feels like a time of resurgence, a reawakening — even more so than spring.  Many plants and animals are on the verge of hibernation, but in my early years, this was when my life began anew after a summer hiatus.  School started again, with the promise of new things to learn and do.  Social activity increased as more people moved into my circle of interaction.  With all that, new opportunities arose for adventure and exploration.

I remember one fall in particular.  I’ve always liked the idea of flying an airplane.  This started when I was about 6 years old.  My brother, who is three years older than I, built plastic models of WWII airplanes.  I would hold them by the fuselage and pretend I was piloting them in swooping dives, gracefully curving banked turns and vertical climbs.  I knew about ailerons, elevators, rudders, flaps and propellers.  I understood, to some degree, how and why they worked and how to use them.  I knew about thrust, drag, lift and weight.  I knew and understood that the way to land was to fly onto the ground.  I intuitively grokked what it meant to fly a plane.  And I yearned to actually do it.  Then, in the autumn when I was fifteen, an opportunity arose that I could not refuse.

I had a job working in a grocery store, putting fruit and vegetables out on the stands.  For $1.00 an hour.  Shortly thereafter, the minimum wage law took effect and my wages jumped to $1.06 and hour.  Not much, but enough that, over many weeks, I had some saved.  With that money burning a hole in my pocket, I heard, I don’t remember how, that the biology teacher in my high school was a flight instructor.  So, I waited outside the door to his classroom until class was over and approached him, saying I wanted to learn to fly.  He was very accommodating and shortly thereafter my experiences in flight began.  He would pick me up, a couple of times a week, at 6 in the morning, and we’d go fly, then go to school.  I immediately fell in love and now, at 73, I have a lifetime of wonderful memories to peruse.  That was truly a wonderful fall to remember.

Nowadays, I walk with Waldo on the rail-trail in the autumn.  It no longer offers up the same kind of new opportunities to expand my life’s experiences as it used to, but the ebb and flow of time, punctuated by the change of seasons, persists.  Mother Nature pulses with seasonal change as the year progresses and the difference in my life from one to another is less dramatic than it used to be.  But still, just because of my history, I think the calendar year should begin with September first, not January first.

Waldo, I don’t think knows one season from another.  But I do think he enjoys walking out here without suffering the heat of mid-summer, or the freezing cold of the winter.  It’s hard to tell for sure, what with his tail wagging and nose to the ground in hot pursuit of God-knows-what in any season.  When I think about it, I suppose every day provides ample opportunity for new experiences for him.

But, to me, fall is somehow still something special.

Somebody has jumped the gun and is decorating pine trees a little early…

We’re back!

I am not a human being.  I am a human BEING.  Just be.

-Shannon L. Alder

Waldo and I are back to walking six miles on the rail-trail – finally.  We worked up to that slowly: we walked two miles, rested a day and nothing was worse, then three miles, rested a day, four miles, rested a day then five.  After not having walked very far for eight weeks, five miles really wore me out, so we rested two days and still no adverse effects.  I still have pain when I lay down and try to sleep, but nothing new.  Now I just have to get the steroid shot in my back and we’ll slowly work back up to six miles almost every day.  Despite being worn out after the longer walks, it felt good to be getting back into our routine.

It’s pretty obvious Waldo is feeling it too.  He’s much more animated, without being frenetic, even doing only the two miles.  On the longer walks, he’s back to doing his Waldo thing in the woods.  He loves it out here.  I can see it when we get home too.  He’s less demanding of my attention, pulls less on his leash on the rail-trail days, but is still a little desperately energetic on the off days.  It’s not as bad as when all we did was walk around the apartment grounds, but he is definitely more relaxed after a rail-trail day.

Autumn changes are speeding up in the woods.  It’s a pleasure to watch the evolution of the season from one day to the next.  Many trees, mostly green at first, become more and more yellow, orange and red as the days go by.  There’s more rain now too and the leaves have begun to blanket the ground with a quilt of riotous fall colors.  Even though the trees and undergrowth are losing their leafy insulation, we’re still pretty well sequestered from city sights and noises.  Walking along the gently curving path, I can’t help but feel that Waldo and I have somehow gotten stuck in an eighteenth-century adventure story, like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, or maybe The Last of the Mohicans.  It would not take a great stretch of the imagination to believe that, if I looked closely, hiding amongst the Japanese knotweed or under a dense patch of sensitive fern, I might even get a glimpse of a curious fairy, or a gnome peeking behind a toadstool.

I enjoy these walks in nature the most if I can get myself into an open state of mind where I am only a perceiver of whatever happens.  Not a cataloguer, nor an explainer, but merely an observer.  I do my best to let the moment wash over me like an ocean wave rolling onto a beach, then soaking into the sand.  Trying not to force what’s experienced into a cage having bars of preconceived definition or understanding, I just sense whatever happens and avoid putting any “meaning” to it or even labeling it.  No lines are drawn around parts of creation, claiming this is this or that is that.  No judging is allowed, not good versus bad, nor even red versus green, nor warm versus cold.  I just let it be what it is and let it flow as it might.  The wind doesn’t blow through the leaves in the trees, then cool off the sweat on my skin.  Birds don’t sing and insects don’t buzz.  The leaves aren’t red or green or yellow, in fact there are no leaves at all.  Instead, something magical and undefined occurs; I’m bathed in an entire experience en toto.  All that other “thinking” stuff can occur later.  In the moment, I just soak it all in.

As you might imagine from reading previous posts on this blog, I don’t find this an easy thing to do.  I love to try to ideate about what happens in the now and find a way to put those ideas into my world view, connect what happens in the moment with what happened in the past through the medium of science, rationality and logic.  I pigeon-hole what I experience and do my best to squeeze that little box into a library of similar boxes that fill a library.  A library that is my conception of what makes up the Universe.  But the Universe is so much more expansive and vast than anything I could ever put into my puny brain.  Even that small part of creation that is right before my nose contains more nuance and detail than I’ll ever be able to sense, let alone remember.  But I can, with some effort and for a short period of time, stand before reality in utter and complete awe and wonder.

Does Waldo experience the world like that in every moment of his life?  I think not.  Behind those brown eyes of his, I sense a consciousness, somewhat foreign to mine, but not so different that I can’t perceive its presence.  I’m sure he puts what he smells into categories and draws connections and inferences.  I know he has a good memory and I also know he can problem solve pretty damn well.  That suggests some kind of conceptual thinking.  But, at other times, I also catch him lying down on his balcony, surveying his dogdom, calmly and quietly, as if in deep meditation.  I think he would understand what I’m trying to say.

We both love just being in nature.

The less said, the better.

Back at the rail-trail — at last.

The Greek word for “return” is nostos.  Algos means “suffering.”  So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

-Milan Kundera

Well, Waldo and I made it back to the rail-trail.  As soon as Waldo is out of the car, he’s tugging at the end of the leash.  I can almost hear him say, “Oh boy!  Oh boy!  Oh boy!”  And then he’s across the street and in the bushes, sniffing his heart out.  I look down the path and I’m immediately smitten by the idyllic autumn colors and the beckoning allure of a country path.

We’re not walking far, just a couple of miles, but we’re back.  I feel a certain and definite nostalgia for the place.  Not because we’ve been in these woods so often, not because Waldo and I have invested so much time and effort here, not even because we enjoy its beauty — there are many trails we’ve been on that display their own beauty.  I’m drawn to this trail because it’s our trail.  Over the years, we’ve established a bond – I know many of the plants and animals by name: red, black and white oaks, staghorn sumacs, and black walnuts; various types of mosses, ferns and grasses; eastern gray squirrels, eastern chipmunks and New England cottontail rabbits; red-tailed hawks, red-bellied woodpeckers, and northern cardinals; even gypsy moth caterpillars.  Waldo and I have made friends with the trees, bushes, weeds, animals and even insects.  And now that we’re back, they all seem to be greeting us with smiles and murmurs.  It may be my imagination, but Mother Nature even appears to have dressed up for the occasion — showing off mottled gowns of bright green, yellow and red, besparkled by splotches of autumn sunlight piercing through the canopy.  We’re back home.

When at the ballpark, Waldo gallops as hard as he can, for as long as he can.  It’s as if he has a frenzied head of steam built up that he has to release.  Here, he is still very energetic and runs at a fast trot from interesting twig to smelly glob of I-don’t-know-and-don’t-want-to-know what.  The difference is that along the trail, he is engaged.  He may not know and could care less about the names of what he senses, but he interacts with everything.  Smelling most of what he confronts, watching some, listening and feeling what’s going on around him and even tasting and eating some of it (there are certain leaves he likes to eat).  In his own way, Waldo has made friends with our trail too.

I don’t think I’m anthropomorphizing when I say that Waldo prefers going on our walks to just visiting an open field off-leash and letting ‘er rip.  He may need to get that border collie energy burned out of his system, but here, he’s living the dream.  There is so much variety and stimulating temptation.  Every foot of ground has something different to explore and experience with whatever sense he can bring to bear.  His tail is up and wagging and there’s a bounce in his step as he flits with vigor from one object of interest to the next.

Today, the air is cool with the slightest of breezes.  The sky is cloud-free and sunlight falls soft in pastel hues that illuminate in technicolor without making you squint.  Patches of shadow dance on the tarmac in sync with the whispering wind in the leaves.  It’s still quite early in the fall, but, already, many tan and yellowed dead oak, maple, birch, sassafras and walnut leaves lay on the ground.  In a few weeks, there will be a carpet of color covering the trail making it look like the yellow brick road in Oz.  But, for now, there is just a suggestion of that which is to come.  There’s still a lot of green up in the trees with only a dab here and there of yellow and orange.  That, too, will soon change and in a month or so, the trees will become skeletal shadows of what they were.  Much has changed in the time since our last visit, but it remains so very familiar, just the same.

My leg hurts a bit, so I make us turn around and head home.  Waldo follows a little reluctantly, I think.  My pain is still tolerable, but I don’t want to overdo and suffer a setback that will keep us away even longer.  The worst of the pain still happens at night when I lay down and I can only sleep for a couple of hours before the ache wakes me up.  I don’t want to make that worse, either.

Once home, Waldo’s much more sedate and satisfied than he has been for almost two months now.  The difference is palpable.  I, too, feel a blissful, calming fatigue.  My muscles seem to tell me that it’s time to rest, yet not with an urgent need, but more of a welcomed appreciation, like a full stomach after a gourmet meal requests a nice siesta.  Legs up, I lay in my recliner with an audible “Aaaah.”  Waldo is out laying on the balcony, peacefully surveying his dogdom.

Both Waldo and I are grateful to be on the rail-trail once again.

We missed this place.

Sassafras tree.

Autumn leaves shower like gold, like rainbows, as the winds of change begin to blow.

-Dan Millman

It’s mid-October, as I write this, and the trees have only started to change color.  It was only a few years ago, no more than a couple of decades, that in late September, the vibrant colors of fall would flow out over the land like a dawn-colored quilt, full of yellows, oranges and reds.  I vividly remember flying, that time of year, a small Cessna at five thousand feet over New England to witness a mottled, undulating sea of color, stretching out in all directions as far as I could see.  But no more.  Now, we have to wait until the end of October to witness Mother Nature show off the splendor of her fall, leafy gown.  In so many ways, the effect of global warming is showing its effect.

Waldo and I are still constrained, largely, to walking around the apartment complex.  The trees here are somewhat different from those alongside the rail-trail.  The grounds have been horticuluralized, according to someone’s idea of landscape beauty.  I like their choices, they provide more variety, but they are not exactly what nature would have chosen.  There are still plenty of tall oaks and various types of maples, but there are also rarer species, like sassafras, dogwood, yew, juniper, cedar and cypress, in abundance.  Most of them are still green, although some are starting to convert to Kodachrome.  The dogwoods are now deep red.  There is a large red maple that has caught fire and the Norway maples, usually a dark shade of Sacramento green, have turned a brown/maroon hue.  I wonder how the rail-trail has changed.  It’s been five weeks since we’ve been down there.

Waldo’s changed some too, although that has nothing to do with the season.  He’s always been full of verve and is eager to go, but now he feels the need to run as fast as he can, as permitted by the length of the leash.  He pulls harder and is a bit more frantic to go out.  I can’t walk that far, but I can get away with walking more often.   Still, it doesn’t seem to be enough.  He’s just not getting enough exercise.

So, I take him to a fenced-in little league baseball field and let him off-leash.  Most fields have no trespassing signs on them, I just found out that this one does not.  Once on the field, he immediately runs up to the fence and then gallops at full throttle along its entire length.  He does this over and over again, always in a counterclockwise direction, until he can go no more.  It’s good for me because I neither have to walk nor even stand.  I sit in the dugout and watch him go.  After a while, he comes over to me and lays in a patch of shade, panting heavily.  I give him a few minutes of rest, then I stand and wander out onto the field, encouraging him to follow and get it all out of his system.  Waldo gets up and follows.  That’s all it takes and he’s back at the fence-line and off again, full-blast.  This is obviously something he really needs.

After an hour, we get back in the car and go home.  Later in the day, I have to take my grandson to soccer practice, so while that’s going on, Waldo and I walk around the edge of the field nine times.  That also takes an hour and is just about two miles long.  All in all, that’s more exercise in a single day than we’ve had in over a month.  I just hope I don’t pay for it tonight and tomorrow…

All that activity must have done Waldo some good, because, on our last poop and pee walk before we go to bed, Waldo is much calmer and less frenetic.  He’s out at the forward end of the leash, romping and pouncing, but he’s not pulling nearly as hard as he has been.  He’s a happy dog tonight.  I just need to keep this level of activity up until we can return to our usual haunt.

The good news is, it looks like I’m not going to need surgery.  Sometime in the coming weeks, I’ll be getting a steroid shot in my back.  Given the fact that the oral steroids I took helped as much as they did, I’m quite hopeful, as is my physiatrist, that the shot will take care of the problem and I’ll be back at my normal level of activity shortly thereafter.  I’ll have to start slow and increase the distance we walk gradually, but we should be back to where we were after a couple of weeks — along with an occasional visit to the ballpark for the heavy workout.  Just maybe, we’ll be back out there amidst Mother Nature when she is finally ready to flout her autumn beauty.  I don’t think Waldo cares one way or another about all the colors, but I am very sure he’s ready to get back on the trail.

God knows, I am.

Now, that’s what I call a red oak!

We don’t walk far, but where we walk is pretty.

There I was, fog so thick I couldn’t see the instruments.  Only way I knew I was inverted was my flying metals were in my eyes.  But I knew I was really in trouble when the tower called me and told me to climb and maintain field elevation.

-Anonymous

It’s 58℉ and raining.  All day.  It’s the kind of rain that drizzles, gets you wet, but doesn’t pound at you with watery buckshot as if Mother Nature was blasting tiny water balloons your way.  There is next to no wind and no lightning.  This is the kind of weather I used to like to fly in, during my flying days.  In pilot speak, it’s 2 miles visibility with a ceiling of 600 feet, which was the minimum that the company I used to rent Cessnas from would allow me to fly in.  The temperature is warm enough that the chance of picking up ice is negligible and the winds are light enough that there is no turbulence to worry about.  I would leave from one airport and fly to several others in the area to “shoot approaches.”  That is, come in to a runway as if I were going to land, then go around, without even a touch-and-go, and move on to another airport and another approach.

In order to be able to fly, legally, in instrument conditions (weather conditions that require the use of flight instruments), one has to maintain proficiency by flying a certain number of hours and approaches by reference to instruments only.  Usually this means simulating instrument conditions by wearing some kind of vision limiting device (a hood or special glasses) that allows the pilot to see only the instrument panel (an additional safety pilot is required who can maintain a lookout for other planes).  But when the weather is “bad,” you get to practice in the real thing, and Mother Nature usually has other interesting circumstances to throw your way that you have to deal with.  Anyway, this is done in the clouds and rain on instruments only – there is nothing to see out the windshield or windows except a dense white fog.

There is a real beauty to the experience.  It’s also very cerebral, and challenging, what with concentrating on dials, needles and GPS readouts, deciphering their meaning and manipulating the flight controls in an appropriate manner in response.  Then, in the last few minutes, the plane pops out under the clouds, you can see the Earth six hundred feet below, and, voila, as if by magic, right there in front of you, exactly where it’s supposed to be, is the runway stretching out in a long straight line, ready to accept you to her tarmac bosom.  At that point, you put the “balls to the wall” (a pilot’s way of saying “pedal to the metal”), climb back into the clouds and go to the next airport for another type of approach.

But that was then and this is now.  Now, I’m walking the apartment grounds with Waldo, in the rain, because my leg still hurts.  I’m afraid that if I walk further than about a half-mile, I will make it worse and have a setback in healing whatever is causing the pain.  So, no rail-trail – yet.  My leg hurts a little more when we’re done walking, but the worst part is lying down and trying to sleep.  There’s something about the position that makes my leg throb bad enough that I’m awakened from whatever sleep I can get, after only about two hours or so.  I am so ready to put all this behind me, to pop out from under the overcast caused by whatever it is that ails me.  When that happens, I’m going to look out at the rail-trail, stretching out invitingly in front of me, welcoming Waldo and I back to stroll in the woods, the moss, the ferns, the grasses and everything else that awaits us there.  And there is no way in hell I’m going to climb back into those clouds for another go ‘round.  I’ve had more than enough.

Waldo prances around, chasing sticks and stalking rabbits, tail wagging, obviously having a good time.  But he’s not getting enough exercise.  He needs to get out there and walk, for six miles, twelve miles, or even sixteen.  At least occasionally.  I can tell because he pulls more vigorously at the leash and is asking to go out every two hours or so.  I do what I can to satisfy his need to burn off border collie energy, but it’s not enough.  He, too, is ready to return to our former lifestyle.  Sigh.  “Waldo,” I tell him, “no storm lasts forever.  We’ll be back to our old haunts soon.  Be patient.”  And he seems to be.

More patient that I am, maybe.

We even have a sassafras tree out back.