The lighting directors got it just perfectly right last week. Didn't you find yourself stopping and just basking in the stunningly beautiful autumn light? Sometimes, in the morning, the sun's glare and glint off the fresh dew could catch you having to squint. By noontime, the night's chill was off the air, yet the light had none of the summer's haze. All of our different bodies of water were shimmering in the light, and the sparkle continued into the evening. Also, we had our first taste of rain. It was such a soft mist, but it was persistent enough to dampen the earth. So then we had the warm earth damp smells that are startling different from irrigated earth smells. There is a chemistry happening in rainwater that I do not understand, but I can smell it. At this time of the year, and again in some spring showers, it has a sweet and delicious fecundity.
Last week we also had the light from a full moon, which made me realize that I am missing Mars. The planet was such an incredible object in our skies last month. It was just there - no need for telescopes. Now, if you remember, you can search it out, off still in the distant horizon, escaping from our gaze again. There was a great cartoon in The New Yorker showing Mars speaking to another planet, saying, "Man! That's the closest I've been to earth in 60,000 years and that's about as close as I ever wan to get."
Which reminds us that last week we also lived through the second anniversary of Sept. 11. We do carry on, but the day was a long and uneasy one. I do not think we have yet found our voice about that day two years ago. We continue to struggle with what is fed to us through the media and the pundits, or if we are young, we strive to just push it aside. None of it sits comfortably. Even our benign temperate climate that surrounds us so gently these first days of autumn mocks us. It looks like paradise, it feels like paradise, yet....
Madeleine Wilde
Freelance writer Madeleine Wilde is a Queen Anne resident. She can be reached at qanews@nwlink.com
