I was afraid, from all I had heard, that there would be no real fall here, not the sort of clear crisp days that I expect from my years in Michigan. Person after person told me that the rains start in October and continue until May, and I pictured sodden clumps of brown leaves in the gutters.
Instead, these days have been all yellow-gold. The sun shines less harshly than it did a month ago, and the yellow leaves glow in its light. I sit out in the park at lunch without a jacket, soaking up what seems like the last of the sun before we all go into hibernation.
S. and I went rambling yesterday afternoon. We walked and we talked, and we giggled when two cute shirtless guys ran by. We wandered down to the river, low this time of year, and picked our way across to a former island, now stranded in a sea of mud. We sat in the setting sunlight until we got cold and worried about making it back to the car before dark.
On the way back, we clambered up a hill covered in blackberry brambles. Thorns stuck in our jeans so that we were picking them out long after the road opened before us. We walked down a two-track next to a field and I said, "This reminds me of Africa, of Tanzania, where our house was on the edge of the city and I could take walks at sunset into the fields." We walked past a little grove of young trees, and she said, "In China, that would be a forest, those little trees planted in a row. It would be the greenest thing around."
The different parts of the world are not so different. I saw Michigan in the blackberries, Rwanda in the stony paths, Tanzania in the fields.
It was just fully dark when we walked out of the woods. Headlights were flashing by on the highway, and there were just a few cars left in the parking lot. We were relieved that the park gates were still open.
Instead, these days have been all yellow-gold. The sun shines less harshly than it did a month ago, and the yellow leaves glow in its light. I sit out in the park at lunch without a jacket, soaking up what seems like the last of the sun before we all go into hibernation.
S. and I went rambling yesterday afternoon. We walked and we talked, and we giggled when two cute shirtless guys ran by. We wandered down to the river, low this time of year, and picked our way across to a former island, now stranded in a sea of mud. We sat in the setting sunlight until we got cold and worried about making it back to the car before dark.
On the way back, we clambered up a hill covered in blackberry brambles. Thorns stuck in our jeans so that we were picking them out long after the road opened before us. We walked down a two-track next to a field and I said, "This reminds me of Africa, of Tanzania, where our house was on the edge of the city and I could take walks at sunset into the fields." We walked past a little grove of young trees, and she said, "In China, that would be a forest, those little trees planted in a row. It would be the greenest thing around."
The different parts of the world are not so different. I saw Michigan in the blackberries, Rwanda in the stony paths, Tanzania in the fields.
It was just fully dark when we walked out of the woods. Headlights were flashing by on the highway, and there were just a few cars left in the parking lot. We were relieved that the park gates were still open.
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