Nearly November

I went to a pumpkin patch yesterday. I had never been to a pumpkin patch before. What kind of child of the upper-middle class am I?! I've still never been to an apple orchard, either. I'm going to attribute the lack of seasonal outings like these to the fact that my mom was (and is!) an awesome human being and preferred to spend her single-mother autumn weekends just hanging out at home instead of hauling us out to various patches and orchards. We got our pumpkins from the grocery store, thank you very much, and usually not until a day or two before Halloween, because procrastination is embedded in our family's genetic code.

Did you know that pumpkin stems are covered in a prickly sort of fir? ?I didn't. Until I reached down to pick up a pumpkin and felt like a misbehaving doe, trying to steal a snack from a forbidden farm. Very treacherous.

The pumpkn patch was located on Sauvie Island, a place that made me forget about the little twinges of regret I had felt in the previous days about my move here. I was beginning to feel that it was a massive mistake to move out here, that I was crazy for making such an enormous change without any real plans in place. The unreal beauty of this place made me feel only grateful for this beautiful city that I live in. It made me pause and just appreciate that I am here. The sun was high in the perfect clear sky, with Mt. St. Helen visible to the north, Mt. Hood poking it's pointy cap in to the sky a bit south of that. Nearly impossible to have afternoon like yesterday's and not feel your spirits lift out of whatever funk they were in.

I'm still feeling the warmth from yesterday, but it's also hard not to think about the fact that this Indian Summer can't last much longer. It's nearly November, and the cold rain will set in sooner than later, I think. It's always like that, I guess - qualifying a pleasent present with the assumption that it can't possibly last. But that's ok. Maybe it will last. Maybe it will be a lovely autumn forever, light streaming through yellow leaves and mild breezes breezing by every few minutes.