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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

February 14, 2011

Yukon Quest

The leaders of the Yukon Quest are a day away from their finish in Fairbanks, after a long week and a half on the trail from White Horse, Yukon Territory.  When they left White Horse, the weather was balmy for the Interior in February–temperatures above zero, clear skies.  But in the last day or two temperatures in Fairbanks have dropped to thirty below, and for the mushers along the trail now between Dawson and Circle, strung out along the frozen Yukon or attempting Eagle Summit, it is even colder–in some spots nearly fifty below.

What started as a glorious race, the front-runners in high spirits about their dogs and their abilities, takes a perilous turn at about this point.  One musher, a multiple Quest winner, Hans Ghatt, broke through overflow–where water breaks over thick ice above  a stream–and became wet to his shoulders.  When  the next musher came upon him, he was going into hypothermia, and heard the musher approach as in a dream.  The second musher helped him back to the checkpoint, where he learned that he had frozen a couple of fingers, and, knowing when to accept the luck he had, he scratched from the race.

The leader, Hugh Neff, seemed to be burning up the trail, hours ahead of the others, but the cold and a storm on Eagle Summit stalled him and a second musher, who caught up with him and stalled as well.  A third musher came and helped Neff’s team up the hill, but near the summit, they turned and retreated back down the hill.  Now, the leaders have switched positions, and Neff may or may not get back on the trail again.

Whenever I have a good reason to, I have my students read London’s story, “To Build A Fire,” which has special significance to them if they’ve been here a few winters or have grown up anywhere in Alaska.  In the story, the man is condemned by his insistence that reason is more reliable than the instincts of a dog.  Anyone who has followed the Quest knows differently.  The Quest dogs are hearts with legs and tails; they will do anything for their mushers, who, in turn, will do anything for their dogs.  One rookie musher sleeps in the hay along with her dogs when she camps at night.  Any Quest musher–even the toughest–gets teary eyed when talking about the dogs in the team.

So it’s tough on everyone when dogs die in the race, and they do.  Usually, after necropsy,it’s clear there’s a reason–an undetected weakness in a blood vessel, for example–but often the cause is unclear.  Like endurance horses or race horses, these dogs get constant veterinary care when they are at rest.  If there is any chance that a dog is ill or unfit, they are pulled from the race.  No mistreatment of dogs is tolerated by mushers or by race officials.  Still, the race itself is a risk,with long stretches of solitude, away from human contact.  Things happen.

The race is an elemental test of human and animal spirit–not for everyone.  And it’s starkly beautiful.  Photos of the teams running along the flat white highway of the Yukon against the backdrop of the river bluffs are dramatic and compelling.  There are few challenges that match it, even for an armchair follower like me.

Outside it’s dropping down below twenty below here on the ridge.  Mattie and Sam have long late-winter coats that keep them well-insulated, and I’ll head out before bedtime to take them another flake of hay.  I’ll look up at the waxing gibbous moon, if it’s still above the ridgeline behind the house, and think of those mushers on the trail, running and resting in the soft gray light, thinking of the hamburgers waiting for them at Angel Creek and of the flags on the Cushman Street bridge in Fairbanks, rising over the Chena River, the finish, and a well-deserved rest.  Any time they get there, someone will be there, cheering the dogs for a few more yards, welcoming them all home.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

December 21, 2010

Dark of the Year/Dark of the Moon

Tonight, Winter Solstice, a day when the energy seems sapped from the waking hours by the cold and the infringing dark.  Today, I glanced out a window at three in the afternoon and, from inside the lighted building,  it looked and felt like midnight.  Usually, I manage to be home around this day of the year–usually perched on a hard chair, coffee in hand, a stack of papers in front of me.  My eyes get blurry after a long session of this–a day or two, depending on the class load–and morning and night begin to merge.  But today, I was up and about, putting in a few hours on campus, advising students.   I was inside for the brief hours of sunlight.

Then, tonight, a shadow dented the moon, then spread over it till it was fully rusty.  We turned off all the lights in the house and went on the deck to watch the last bit of bright moon slip into shadow.   Across the hill, people turned off their lights–even the string of blue Christmas lights we can usually see high on the ridge across the road went dark.  From time to time, somewhere on the dark hillside, a camera flash lit up.

I stood in the twenty below air, in my Muck Boots, down vest, and wool sweater, very still, hands thrust in pockets for warmth.  As the moon darkened, the stars brightened, and gradually the sky seemed dusted with them, crisp against the black curve of space.  For a few moments, I could feel the depth of the galaxy, the universe, as if the strange darkening of the moon cast it all into perspective and I could sense clearly the way we’re falling through that infinite liquid emptiness.  Strangely, it’s a comforting feeling–as if I were reminded of a long journey we’re all on or brought back to focus on the long-way-to-go destination of it rather than the minutiae of getting there, such as waiting, ungraded papers.

Standing there in the unlit night, bareheaded in the cold, my hands deep in the pockets of my down vest, it seemed like a good time to reflect, re-evaluate, refocus on things that truly matter.   Meanwhile, Sam, in the corral, pushed his food dish around like a dog, wanting to get at the last crumbs.  He’s never lost sight of  what matters, as far as he’s concerned.

By the time New Year’s Eve rolls around, we’ll be easing back into the light, making our resolutions, thinking of the first seed catalogs to come.  Tonight is the turning point, and the psyche curls into  a hibernating ball, then stirs to stretch out into another year.

 

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Poetry Challenge 60

December 18, 2010

Days away from solstice now.  The light is slaty blue in the deep afternoon–sundown around 3:30 and losing a minute and a half of daylight each day.  Temperatures hovering at around thirty below.  Things that don’t seem to belong together merge: the cold of metal feels hot to the touch; hands turn to flippers in  layers of gloves topped with mittens; the darkness holds light reflected in all directions by the white snow; the ice on the roads gains friction as the temperature drops; and deep in our drowsing psyches, some wild energy stirs, gives us dreams, reminds us of the extravagance of spring months away.  Someone asked what the brief time between sunrise and sunset should be called and I suggested “dawnset,” the state of daylight for us in the Interior this time of year.

So write about opposites merging, their energy, their resolution into a whole.  Or write a complaint about the deep bitter cold.

 

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Dancing in the North

December 5, 2010

The Nutcracker: a Prelude

 

A brief word on the Nutcracker, since our last performance will be today at 2 in Hering Auditorium.

Last night’s performance was radiant.  This year’s cast is a mix of upcoming North Star Ballet dancers, a couple of returning dancers, and guests at different stages of their careers.  Although the sets have been the same for over twenty years, they still remain fresh to me–it’s like entering a beloved childhood home, slightly distorted in the manner of dreams.

I have long wanted to write more on the Nutcracker, having written publicity articles on our local version of it for nearly 15 years now.   Since the Nutcracker season everywhere can extend from now to New Year’s, I’ll post a few meditations on the story and its archetypes and significances–at least as I see it.

Mostly, don’t dismiss the Nutcracker.  At the end of last night’s performance, I thought of how this ballet, unlike, say, Swan Lake, contains no tragedy (unless you are a mouse, that is), and that this lack of tragedy allows some viewers to dismiss it.  But for me, the ballet represents a rite of passage–for the dancers, for Clara/Marie moving from childhood to adulthood, and for us, the audience, watching this ritual ballet as we head into the darkest time of year.  Who wouldn’t want to go to the Land of Sweets and be ushered into the future by the ever-competent Sugar Plum Fairy?

I’ll be there this afternoon, tearing up as I always do–the gorgeous music with its dark undertones and its possibility of light and hope–and defending my bid on the ten-pound bag of organic carrots at the silent auction!

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Poetry Challenge 59

December 2, 2010

Answering Joe

After last week’s strange rain and icy sheets on all the roads, trees, fences, cars, we’re now having normal weather for early December in the Interior—twenty below and colder.  The mornings are darker now, with a glow of orange above the jagged ridgeline of the Alaska Range.  In this deep cold, I am thinking of my friend Joe Enzweiler, who is battling brain cancer and whose conversation, poetry, and laughter have warmed winter Thursday nights at my house for many years before this one.

 

I posted this poem of Joe’s in January 2009—and it seems apt for today.   When you read the poem, pick a word or image and write a poem back to Joe, starting with that word.  Send me the poem in the comment section and I’ll add it to this post.

 

In Thanks

For these, blue evening
like a child’s brush,
one star.
Three redpolls, frost
on the nail heads,
white steeple of alder
below the grand
terrible night.
And a beating heart
in which they’re known.
The amazement of our
morning sheets.
Four redpolls now,
then five
in the dust of the day.
For all that stirs
beyond the clearing
as the soft daylight
wicks off.
For the wondrous timepiece
unwinding,
in silence
for life
we bow.

–Joseph Enzweiler
(from The Man Who Ordered Perch
Iris Press, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
2004)

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

November 23, 2010

Global What?

After the last post about the lovely time Mattie, Sam, and I had free-longeing in the deep dry snow, we in the Interior have been hit with two days of rain, fog, and ice.  While this kind of drippy weather is common in the Pacific Northwest, it’s unheard of here in the usually frozen north.  Our ground has been frozen for more than a month now, and the frost line is well below the surface.  What this means for us is that the rain on the roads turns snow first to slush, then to a thick layer of ice.  Everything—tree branches, fences, even horse manure—is coated with a slick clear layer of it.  It’s lovely in some ways, but it’s shut down the whole town and surrounding area for two days and counting.  The long-term forecast has it continuing until Wednesday night—too late for last minute Thanksgiving shopping.

The good news is that we just stayed home—then heard that even the university had cancelled classes, something that has never happened in my experience, even during periods of 60 below.  Articles in our local newspaper, the Daily News-Miner, show cars in ditches and the slick shine of ice on the roads.  Friends are calling and Facebooking each other to see how they’re holding up.  One friend is nearly out of coffee.  Another reports that a small willow fell on her mother’s car.  A third is tying on her and her sweetie’s ice skates, headed out to play hockey in the road.

Last night, we were settled in the living room with our laptops—remember the days when it would have been books?—when we heard a buzzing hum and saw a flash of green light out the window.  We looked at each other.

“What was that?” I asked.  The power stayed on, but, as usual, I thought of the horses and went out to check on them.  Sam, the watch horse, was standing outside the run-in shed, looking off up the hill behind me.  I went and checked them and took them a bit of hay to encourage them to stay in the shed.  Their coats were wet, but they didn’t seem cold.  On the way back in, I unplugged the water tank heater, still not sure what the strange light had been.  The snow was soggy with rain and a few small birches arched over the cutbank, glistening with ice.

Beck inside, I settled in once again, picking up the book, Horses in Human History. Suddenly we heard the sound again and saw the flash.  I pulled on my rubber muck boots and Mike put on his coat, and we opened the door.  The whole sky lit up green and the buzzing was louder than ever.  It seemed to be coming from up the hill where there is a power line cut running through the woods.  We called the electric co-op and learned that there were power outages everywhere and that they had just cut off power to that line.

Up until that point, I admit, it had been kind of fun—a bit of an extended holiday.  After that we thought of all the trees on our hill, how we lose a couple every summer in a windstorm.  Neither of us wanted to go to sleep, and when we did, it was with one ear open to the sounds of trees thumping.

Today, all’s well, but soggy.  I am headed out to the corral to put a waterproof blanket on Sam—more for my comfort than for his.  I’m planning alternative Thanksgiving dinners, since I don’t plan on driving out to shop—and the Seattle airport is hit with snow, as well, which means empty shelves for us.  We’ll have chicken and pecan pie, cranberry sauce from frozen cranberries, mashed potatoes from the buckets of potatoes stored in spruce shavings in our yet-unfinished tack room, and maybe some purple cabbage that’s out there, too.

By Thursday, temperatures are supposed to head back to normal for us—below zero.  All this slush will turn into glaciers. We’ll be chipping away at it for the rest of winter—an icy footing under the rest of winter’s snow.

And I’m wondering where this all is heading.  This weather blew over to us from Siberia, and it stretches the length of our state—Prudhoe to Anchorage—nearly 800 miles.  It sounds like the tail end of it is hitting the Pacific Northwest—so it’s possibly a 2000-mile weather system following a changing pattern of wind currents here in the North.  While the thought of the Interior developing weather like Alberta, as I heard once on NPR, has some appeal to a horse lover, the process of getting from here—the boreal forest, the deep cold of winters, the lovely dry air—to there is not a magical transformation, and means the loss of more than  just trees and grassland.

I’m not a scientist, but I know scientists here working on problems related to global warming—fish diseases, melting ice lenses, sea ice retreat, insects killing the boreal forest.  Things are out of whack, and we are just beginning to grapple with what it takes to think and act our way through it.

Meanwhile, coffee’s on.  I’m going to wrap this up and go dry off Sam, then settle in for a good game of Scrabble.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

November 14, 2010

Fine snow sifting through the air—a day of gray on gray.  I went out to the corral to rake up manure and add it to my newly-half-built manure compost bin and spend time with Mattie and Sam, who are on their long winter layoff.  Though the darkness comes earlier now, there’s still a time during mid day when the sky is full of light and the snow seems to catch the light and magnify it in the air—even on a day like today when there’s no sun, just flat, filtered cloudlight.

I just finished a conversation with my friend Joe, a brilliant poet who has been part of my writing community for the thirty-plus years I’ve lived in the Interior.  He is ill; in the midst of a visit to his brother back east, two summers ago, he was struck down by a seizure and discovered that he had a brain tumor.  Now, it has returned, and he is back in Ohio, living through rounds of treatments, MRIs, hope and despair.

I have been thinking of him, of how fast our lives can turn and on how little.  Here at Mattie’s Pillow, I find it possible to believe that I can fend off trouble with good intentions.  If I keep my hands in garden soil and horse manure, I magically believe, I will stay healthy and strong.  I recommend it to anyone who asks; the transformation of hay to manure to compost to soil to tomatoes to the delicious meal of pasta I can share with a friend such as Joe seems powerful to me.  The best part of the magic is that the horse is in the middle of it all, the agent of transformation, health, and strength.

But I know there’s more to it than that.  There’s randomness to disease.  It does no good to search back to the time the disease began, for that moment can’t be predicted or changed.  We can only go forward.  I told Joe that his friends here love him and asked what I could do.  I wish I could send him this snow—so dry and fine, falling with a soft hiss and softening the edges of fences, trees, rocks, the trucks parked for winter, the horse manure pile.  I wish I could bring him here for a few moments to run his hands over Sam’s thick coat, lift his pale mane, and breathe in the yeasty horse smell.

I’ve been reading a book called The Horse in Human History, by Pita Kelenka.  I’m going through it slowly.  It’s an academic book, dense with facts and details.  But it suggests that the connection between horse and human goes back farther than we have previously assumed.  The horse is part of our psyche—whole cultures have evolved as they have because horses were made with strong backs, fast legs, and a predisposition to move in concert with others of their herd.  The horse exists deep in our collective memory—swift, powerful, mysterious, and willing all at once.  And we exist deep in theirs, if it makes any sense to draw a parallel.  At least, the horse as we have bred it reflects our deepest dreams of what we want it to be—and what, by the same token, we want ourselves to be.

Another writing friend, Sue Bowling, has been blogging about horse color varieties—the variants of palomino, for example: cream, champagne, dark gold, and more.  She gets into the genetic details, the places on the chromosome that change for each color.  For me, thinking of horse colors touches on the dreamlike qualities of horses—the colors have significance to horse owners, they go in and out of fashion—and how we respond to the colors from deep within.  Sam, the fleabitten gray, seems white in winter.  Seeing him looking over the corral fence from the road below, a neighbor girl called him a magic horse.  And Mattie—I blame much of her “issues” on the response some early owner had to her dark coat—the “Fury syndrome,” I call it.  She lived up to the negative expectations some humans placed on her as a big black horse.  I know they’re not really black and white; Sam has flecks of brown and black, and Mattie is really a dark bay.  Still, it’s beautiful to see them together in the snowy corral—the light and dark, yin and yang.

I want to send Joe a bit of what Mattie and Sam give me just by standing in the snow, letting it blanket their winter coats, and letting me lean against them for a while.  I want that magic transformation for him and for us all.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

October 31, 2010

Halloween night, and winter is here for real.  The moon is past the quarter, slimming to crescent, and the night sky is dark with gathering clouds moving over the valley from the south.  This week, after a long, gradual fall, we had a day of snow and dropping temperatures, so that now snow sits fluffy and dry on the ground, the fence line, the garden beds.  It’s just in time for an Interior Halloween.  Puffy parkas fill out a costume nicely, and kids are unrecognizable in them.

We don’t have many kids in the neighborhood, though a family with three kids has moved in across the street since May.  I’ve given up preparing for kids to come trick or treat, so Halloween passes by like any other day, except that it signals a return to Alaska Standard Time—an extra hour of sleep the first day, darker afternoons for the rest of winter.

Today I went out to work with Mattie and Sam a bit.  Their coats are growing in like thick plush, delightful to touch.  In the mornings when I go out to feed them, sleepy and grateful for the interval of outdoor time that chore offers, I lean my arm over Sam’s back and press my face into his fur.  He’s like a hooved teddy bear, despite his bad behavior at summer’s end.  Mattie is less cuddly in winter.  Cold makes her cranky, but she’ll let me run my hand under her mane and scratch her on the forehead.  She feels like thick velvet and, even with the long coat, gleams in sunlight.

The riding season ended for us shortly after classes began at the university.  We had one last clinic with Hannah in September, during which Sam had a spectacular bucking fit, and Mattie and I earned our Bronze Horsemasters rating on the flat.  I’ve been concerned about Sam—we will never know what set him off: a yellow jacket or the sight of horses and riders emerging from the woods in a nearby field or some soreness or just perversity.  Trish, who was riding him, hit the dirt but fell well and primarily injured her confidence.   Later in the week, Colleen, the vet, came out and we stress tested him for lameness and found that he was very sore in his right front pastern and slightly sore in the left.  We checked saddle fit, and the saddle that had fit him like a glove in the beginning of summer now put pressure on his withers, which had filled out, and the saddle generally didn’t fit the contours of his back as well.  She also gave him a full chiropractic treatment and he seemed to relax immediately.  Poor guy.  By today, he was trotting soundly.  Nevertheless, I’ll have him on a joint supplement for the winter, and probably forever.

It’s been the political season, too.  I reflect back on the entry I wrote when Obama was inaugurated—how happy and hopeful I felt.  This political season has been gritty and stranger than usual, even in Alaska, where we have a three-way race for Senator.  I follow politics avidly, though I rarely write about them here.  As someone who teaches writing and whose students are often on their first tentative steps toward entering the academic world after years of working, raising kids, or being in the military, I usually avoid discussing politics in the classroom, and it’s become a habit.  Still, I’m saddened that language has become such a victim of the political process, including an Orwellian style of doublespeak. I’m sadder still that the shouting and vitriol has obscured the efforts of a few decent candidates.

I imagine the world a better place if the “nice guys,” the ones who view public office as a service to humanity rather than a ladder to power or some idea of religious entitlement, would get elected and govern politely.  I’d like it if I’d get phone calls from the winning candidates, like the ones I’m getting from the campaigns, that ask me what I think, what ideas I have, or give me a heads up on the process.  I imagine them all sitting down over scones and coffee and chatting pleasantly about their vision for the world: I want them to want more gardens, more poetry and music, and lots of smart children who have a good and lively place to go learn every day.   I want my friend, who is sick and housebound and watches Glen Beck every day, to get her Medicare and the in-home help she needs—without a sense of irony, but just because it’s what she deserves as a neighbor in the wider national community that we all belong to.

I will be out on the corner Tuesday waving signs for the candidates I support.  For a brief time, before I get too cold to hold my sign up, I’ll imagine a world where these things are true and possible, and I’ll wave at my neighbors as they drive by.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

September 22, 2010

Equinox

Today was the fall equinox, the balance point between our season of extravagant light and the introspective dark of winter. Tonight, as I write this, the moon hangs full in the southern sky over the Tanana Flats, just above a bright speck of planet low to the horizon. For the last few weeks, we’ve had warm, even hot days, gradually cooling to the high 60s during the day, chillier at night. Today, however, the forecast is for colder air to move in from Canada, bringing the chance of frost, even here on the ridge.

This evening, around 7, I went out to feed the horses and felt the deepening chill in the air. It was still pretty light, and I noticed my surprise at this fact—more evidence that deep down, I’m preparing myself to accept winter. I’ve been delaying dealing with the garden, though we’ve been eating from it every day, but tonight I knew I couldn’t delay any more. I brought out some woven grocery bags and picked the pole beans, the yellow French beans curled into Cs and the purple and green Rattlesnake beans—new this year—hanging straight and full. I put the squash into separate bags—small yellow crookneck, golden patty pan, a few small delicata, and three huge zucchini. I went to the greenhouse and moved all the tomato plants that I had left around the outside of the greenhouse into the greenhouse with the more privileged plants, then went back to the house and ran three five-gallon buckets full of hot water to keep the edge off the chill in the greenhouse. Then I went up on the deck and brought in the pots of herbs and the still-flowering geraniums and covered the tomato plants I had to leave outside with a large sheet of clear plastic. I looked around at the pots of flowers on the deck: deep purple and pale yellow petunias, marigolds, orange and pale blue and purple and yellow pansies, lobelia, verbena, lupine. Some of it will take a light frost. Maybe it won’t frost at all—we’ve been lucky so far. But there was frost on the grass in places at the university this morning as I made my way to class, and my toes were cool in my sandals.

We are nearly ready after this lovely reprise of summer. Yesterday we picked up the last of our year’s supply of hay from the Mayo fields. The bales were paper-dry and light enough to make the job of stacking easy. The sun slanted on the field, we saw a family walking along the farm road with a stroller, and Jeter the poodle had a grand time running through the open space to greet the walkers, the other trucks, and us in our separate trucks. Tonight, the new hay gave off a bittersweet scent, rich with the stored sunlight in each blade that will warm Mattie and Sam’s bellies through the coldest season.

Later tonight, we watched a short film on PBS about the poet William Stafford. I don’t know how this all fits together, except to see Stafford’s face in the film and to hear his voice and the voices of others reading his poems reminded me of how much his poems have worked their way into my sensibility. He had a way of looking sideways that included rather than excluded the viewer, and he was one who proved Dickinson’s point that “the mind is wider than the sky.” In this balance point of the seasons, finding Stafford seemed both reassuring and invigorating. He was the teacher, after all, who told student writers that if they didn’t like what they had written, to “lower your standards.” He was one who wrote poems at conferences and gave them away. I remember years ago meeting him on a path at the university when he was staying in student apartments as a visiting writer. I was a graduate student, and somehow our schedules dovetailed so that he would be returning at the same time I was headed to class. The path to the center of campus led through a small grove of birch trees, and that is the point where our paths would cross. He would nod and smile as if he knew me and wanted to share in that nod and the twinkle of his glance the secret of joy in that moment. I don’t remember if we spoke. It may have been this time of year—at least I imagine there were yellow birch leaves making the path golden.

So now we head into the reflective time of year. By the weekend, I will have given up all resistance and will have picked the tomatoes. We will pull the carrots and dig the potatoes and decide the best way to store the three purple cabbages we have left in the garden. I will be sad that these beautiful plants that I have tended from seeds will freeze. Mattie and Sam will get in a few more rides, or Mattie will; Sam is on rest while he heals from his foot and back soreness (more on that in another post).

And winter, for me, is the time for writing, as Stafford reminds me. I like to think he would have appreciated how much growing plants, building the soil, tending and riding the horses stand in for poetry in the summer months. Or even more, how poetry stands in for and can barely show the surface of the richness of these things.

I hear the clatter of the wind chimes outside on the deck. The window is dark. The season has turned, just like that.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

September 18, 2010

After a three-week rainy period in August, we have been enjoying a long sunny fall these past few weeks. The leaves turned so gradually from green to gold to tawny orange, that it’s been hard to note the time when the turn began or shifted from one phase to another. The temperatures have gone up to the seventies every day, at least in some places. And, knock on wood, there has been no frost in the garden yet.

We are scrambling with winter chores, but the bright days and warm air make it hard to keep the sense of urgency we get when we are haying or cutting wood after a bite of frost. Today we had our friend Steve Sayer come out to wire the back Arctic entry, which will double as a tack room once we finish the insulation and inner walls. I spent time in the corral, working on my new manure composting bins, based on a design I found on the Horses for Clean Water website.

The tomato plants in the greenhouse are still green and putting out flowers. The vines are heavy with green tomatoes, still ripening. If I can time it right, I’ll leave them out there till just before the first hard frost—lengthening the season with a space heater for a week if need be. Then I’ll pick the tomatoes and store them in newspaper in a dark place to ripen. We may have them till November, if we’re lucky. The lemon cukes are still producing fuzzy, pale yellow round cucumbers that taste so delicate and faintly of lemon. The peppers, all the varieties we grew this year, are turning a hot red, long commas and parentheses of them dangling from arrowhead shaped leaves.

So much to do, but I feel the season in pause. I long for it to stay into November—as if I were longing for the place I live to shift and become central California or Provence. I often feel as if the change of seasons here in the Interior is not so much a change of light—though it very much is—as a slippage of geography. In summer, we slip south, so that Alaska may actually be where it appears on some maps—somewhere west of Catalina Island. And by fall, we’re chugging steadily back north again to nestle in under the Arctic Circle in time for snow, the aurora, ice fog—I’ll stop at that. It doesn’t bear too much thinking about, though it does bear preparation.

The horses are growing in winter coats. Sam’s coat is an inch long or more by now. Mattie’s is shorter, but velvety and dark, almost dappled. They approve of trucks turning up the driveway with loads of hay.

As for me, I am tired after a day shoveling manure and loading hay. The moon is a pale oval, like a smooth oyster shell dangling over the mountains to the south. After the long summer of gardening and riding, I have plenty to think about and write here. But the moon coaxes my sleepiness. It will have to wait till tomorrow.

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