Re-post: For love of a burning bush

 Autumn winds throw heaps of pine needles on our semi-landscaped lawn and gold leaves flutter into the team's outdoor swimming pool by the bushels. My favorite scarlet burning bush drops leaves reluctantly onto the porch and I'm reminded of this post I wrote in the year of my recovery from auto-immune illness. I decided to re-post it, remembering both the long recovery from my illness and also laughing at the hype over missing Boy Scout badges. If only life in 2025 was so simple . . .

From 2012

There's a burning bush outside the dining room / office window and the crimson color reflects early morning sunlight so vividly that the kitchen ceiling turns pink each day after the kids go to school. The autumnal fireworks are stellar in Colorado this year, and they keep my mood from turning dark on mornings like this when digestive hemmings and hawings produced another restless night, and William's vital Webelo badges turned up missing on the morn of a big Pack Meeting.

I just went to the basement in a desperate attempt to find the Wolf Badge and the wreckage downstairs drove me screaming from the arena. If we just dragged all of the toys and props and scraps into a gigantic trash heap would the children ever miss them? I feel a strong desire to toss it all, to winnow our lives down to the things that have meaning, just as the my life has been whittled down to the basic activities that feed me and my family and keep our little house running.

If the burning bush on my right suddenly spoke and revealed truth to me, what would it say? Make the most of what you have today and be positive! Never give up, never ever give up! Be humble and accept the gift of suffering and knowledge of your limitations!  The Boy Scout badges are in the lower left hand drawer in the new cabinet (I wish)!

I've learned a few truths in the time of the burning bush for myself: we may never find the badges and pins but my husband and I made a good team in looking for them, neither assigning blame and both equally concerned for our son. That I am lucky to be out in the autumnal splendor and I can witness and give thanks for the brilliant trees and leaves much better at a walking pace than at a run. That time passes and progress occurs at slow rates but yet great gobbles of days pass by and somehow things are better.

Three Days of Cake

The Missoula airport has served as backdrop for countless emotional family reunions and goodbyes since my parents moved to Polson in 2001. This past weekend proved no exception as my sister Karen and I converged at the terminal, ready to drive north for a visit with Mom to celebrate Karen's milestone birthday. We launched into conversation immediately after I snapped her picture with the lobby's resident moose, and the words tumbled forth uninterrupted for the entire seventy-five-minute drive. Karen had endured two connecting flights to reach Missoula, but she declared the journey worthwhile for that single conversation—the kind of deep, rambling talk that only sisters can share.

Our darling mother stationed herself in the driveway, keeping eagle-eyed vigil on the road and checking her watch obsessively. Thank goodness the warm autumn sun blessed her with its golden rays—though knowing Mom, she would have maintained her post even through a deluge. After a joyful collision of hugs and the awkward choreography of dragging luggage while attempting simultaneous embraces, we settled into easy chairs for tea and conversation, activities that would occupy the heart of our weekend.

What a profound blessing to share unguarded emotions, genuine concerns, and unvarnished joys with people who know you at your core—to confess foibles they've already catalogued with affection, to dissolve into laughter over inside jokes that have weathered decades of repetition. I gathered updates on my other siblings and their families, caught up on the new season of The Great British Baking Show, and settled in for a marathon of football games tracking our family's beloved teams: CU, Illinois, Ohio State, Oregon, Montana. The throwback Montana uniforms struck me as remarkably candy corn-like—all orange and yellow patterns that seemed perfectly calibrated for autumn.

During a solo afternoon walk, my eyes hungrily devoured Montana's fall splendors. Tundra swans drifted across the lake's mirror surface like white brushstrokes on blue canvas. Heavy purplish crab apples weighed down tree limbs until they bowed like supplicants. A fox capered across the golf course, its russet coat blazing against the manicured green. I found the familiar yellowing cottonwoods that populate Colorado's landscape, but Montana offered her own autumn poetry—flames of maple leaves scattered across lawns and caught in purple sage, white berries clustering on buck brush, deer materializing to drift soundlessly across the grass.

Being on the same wavelength, we indulged in Karen's chocolate birthday cake crowned with melting ice cream three evenings in a row—a delicious ritual. The final day brought a symphony of raindrops drumming against the skylights, the storm graciously offering the briefest window of opportunity to collect vibrant autumn leaves for Karen's fourth-grade class back in southern California. Between the carefully pressed leaves and new pj's from mom, my sister joked that her luggage wouldn't fit back on the plane.

What a blessing to carve out these stolen weekends from our overscheduled lives, to weave new memories with the people who knew us when we were young and still choose to love us now. The cake was delicious, but the real sweetness lay in being together—in that particular alchemy that happens when family gathers, when laughter flows as freely as conversation, when three days feel simultaneously endless and far too brief.

Real Readers (and Autumn, of course)

I'm reassured by the return of lower numbers to my readership stats, convinced now that real humans are represented by those digits. My small contribution to the whirlpool of today's media has softly drifted to the seafloor, where it lies mostly in obscurity. That's what I'm comfortable with, what I'm used to. Let us hope the bots do not rise again.

Moving on .... Autumn is a perennially delightful subject; my favorite season and one that blew into Colorado over the last two weeks, shaking golden leaves to the dried-out ground. We've had a dry September after an astonishingly wet summer and perhaps for that reason, the aspens down at this elevation rather missed the mark, achieving a dusty brown color as opposed to the brilliant yellows of the high country. The cottonwoods are similarly dodgy, but the ash and willow families are burnishing up nicely.

Autumn celebrates the end of growth, the dying of daylight and the return of colder weather. I always want to adopt it's mantra of flagrant, glowing delight in the face of darkness. In further celebration of leaf-peeping, I'm headed back to New England next week, hoping to catch the fall leaves of that splendid territory before they blow off or get snowed upon. I'm venturing north from Boston into Vermont for a day or two then making the happy rounds of family and friends in my old stomping grounds. I may even resurrect an old sweater or two out of sheer delight, though the modern lightweight tech fabrics are almost as worn, and much easier to pack.

In the midst of a truly topsy-turvy world, in which so many people are shocked and suffering, the ritual glory of dying leaves gives me some optimism that the world can keep on turning and evolving in spite of us. Someday the seasons might continue their peregrinations without us, and that thought, too, brings me some peace.

I hope wherever you are, my dear (few) treasured real readers, that you have some seasonal glimmer of joy in your day. Whether it be a scent, a taste, or a vision of a tree in flame, rest assured that I hope the best for you and I am grateful for you.

Autumnal Paradise

A cold front blew in today, gusts of wind chasing multi-colored fallen leaves down the side streets in waves of natural confetti. The autumn has been spectacular here, prompting neighbors to post tree pics from their morning dog-walks, or just photos of the view out their front windows. Brilliant golds, plum purples, crimson reds and Halloween oranges change the light as it pours through our windows, casting a glow on items within and without.

The warmish October and the absence of storms that gifted us with such splendid scenery even spurred acquaintances to poetic raptures online: turns of phrases like "autumn flaunts itself" or "the neighborhood is lit" make me smile; I'm happy that  everyone I know seems to appreciate the rarity of this season, to hold it with gratitude. But "nothing gold can stay," as Robert Frost admonished, and the wind and rain projected for tonight will finally denude our beautiful foliage and signal the start of raking season.

What we love, we protect. I hope we so love our trees, our regular march of seasons, our livable climate, that we continue to push for its protection. The Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will meet for the 26th time, this year in Glasgow, from October 31 through November 21. Keep one eye on the news of COP 26, look for promises made and plan to hold our country to those promises. I want my grandchildren to see an autumnal paradise like the fall of 2021, to scuff their feet through fallen leaves, to jump into leaf piles with abandon. Nothing good can stay, but it can come back again some day.

Leaf-Peeping in the Rockies

 "Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree."  - Emily Bronte

"In autumn, the trees show us how beautiful it is to let things go." - Unknown

I went to Frisco last weekend to hike with girlfriends, and the Rocky mountainsides threw down golden carpets to greet us. Bold yellow aspen leaves shook and shimmied as a Friday afternoon storm washed the valleys clean. We went through our first snow of the season after emerging from Eisenhower tunnel into that same storm, and snowcapped peaks around us stayed white over the weekend as we hiked and chatted our days away.

On Saturday we climbed almost ten miles through a magical fir forest, punctuated by the resplendent aspens and occasionally a red maple or oak. We walked singly or two by two as we discussed our college freshmen, older and younger children, husbands, jobs, politics and favorite hiking accessories. Striding out across a meadow at approximately 10,000 feet, we encountered a young couple and we stepped aside to let them pass.

"No," said the man, "You have to turn around and see the view behind you. It's spectacular!" Dutifully we turned around and exclaimed over the postcard-worthy vision before us: mountain tops split by green, gold and amber, a sky of deepest blue and scudding white clouds. We took photos for them and posed in turn for our group shots. All the autumn hikers greeted us cheerfully, leaning in to the steep slopes and to awe. We encountered many groups of women enjoying the trail together and joked with them (and took more pictures) as we passed.

Later in the day we curled up with prosecco and snacks, somehow finding new subjects to discuss, and I thought about how my girls' weekends have changed over the decades. From dancing, dining and drinking at exciting establishments, returning late, exhausted (and possibly hungover) to young families and messy homes, we've shifted to exertion of a different nature. Without the urgency to seize and fill every independent moment, as I felt when the kids were younger, it's easier to appreciate life's golden moments. I'm not comfortable saying that I have moved into my own autumn, but I'm not unwilling to go when it's time.

Pumpkin Spice and Asphalt

Oh, these nippy September mornings! I shrug on a fleece to coach at 6am and delight in the earliest signs of fall colors on our oak and cottonwood trees. This morning, I added pumpkin spice creamer to my coffee and hummed a tuneless "it's almost fall" ditty as the house fan ran and Daniel got ready for school. The euphoria only lasted until a strong, black licorice-turned-bad scent of asphalt assaulted my senses. A peek through our open screen door revealed early shift workers out administering black tar to the cracks in our street, rushing to repair roads before our Colorado summer-fall turns to fall-winter.

The morning's themes continued as I dodged roadwork signs to pick up Daniel's new black suit at the tailors. Angling my car into impossible parking spots at Trader Joe's, where half the parking lot was blocked off in Tetris shapes for new asphalt, I swore several times and had to breathe deeply as a red SUV nearly backed into my little Mazda. 

Once inside TJ's, I indulged my craving for autumnal peace and bought orange and purple flowers, pumpkin spice yogurt, even a PS smoothie from Nekter, next door. The potassium-fueled drink helped me maneuver two heavy bags of groceries around cones and under yellow caution tape back to my vehicle, commiserating with fellow shoppers turned pack mules, forced to leave our shopping carts at the door.

As I waited to extricate myself from the parking lot maze, I dreamed of getting up into the mountains to see the aspen slopes turn gold. We shouldn't have to 'get away' to enjoy the season that's right here in backyards and neighborhood greenbelts, but with every locality tainted by toxic fumes and crazily busy suburbanites,  I see fall at this altitude in the onset of pumpkin spice and orange lawn decor. The mountains call me, as they do tens of thousands of other leaf-peepers, with whom I will share my hiking trails when we finally escape to the hills.

What will we crave in future falls, as weather, seasonal temperatures and natural disasters continue to flux and disrupt our routines? Will it still be flavored coffees, lattes and yogurts, or will we simply dream of cooler air and the outfit changes of healthy trees?  At the very least, I hope we're less reliant on cars, roads and resulting asphalt updates.