Nights Filled With Longer Hours

Ode to 11

I don't get out much. Which is ironic I suppose.... considering I live "out" of what most folks consider mainstream. But here I sit in my "town" clothes listening to jazz and buzzing off espresso as people flit in and out of these doors like the syncopated trumpeted backdrop.
My 40 minute drive through Shenandoah Valley farmland, the Shenandoah River jumbled into the town of Front Royal. Which is really a story in and of itself - I have never understood this town.
Driving out of the woods, watching territory move outside my windows has me thinking about November. Beautiful November. With it's deep angled sunlight. White puffy clouds are shadowed in deep blue/ grey/ purple undertones. Few golden leaves quake in a chilly breeze. Mountain ridges and hollers are showcased one last time before Appalachia relaxes to boney silhouettes.
Silos and rippling rivers reflect golden glares from this vibrant scene.
Stakes are higher as ripe fruits are harvested, wood is chopped and we begin to hunker down for holidays, friends, family and the simple pleasures of cleansing cold.... creeping closer... with every sunset.
Chilly shivers warmed with golden filters of all that was, is, and is bound to come.

Show Me

It has come to my recent attention that I use the words beautiful and brilliant a lot.
This, along with my recent considerations of the prevalence of "love" in my dialect leads me to a personal challenge... omitting them.
The theory of love languages proposes multiple ways of communicating affection ; quality time, service, verbal, physical and gifts.
In short - if love is an emotion - how is it expressed?How much there must be beyond three spoken words.
So it is my current challenge to use other languages to express emotions. Beauty, brilliance, and love.
Perhaps I could tell you about golden sunlight, wind whipping 4th graders' hair and journal papers, warm stoney cliffs with rippling rain water pools. Perhaps I could tell you of cruising across crisp leaves peppering the Appalachian Trail, the turbulence of waves across a man-made lake as 10 year olds in blaze orange PFDs soaked in this ever present autumn light canoe through what could be the next cover of LLBean's fall catalog.
After spaghetti and garlic bread Sophia and I giggled until we cried over birthday cake and nothing at all.
Two years ago I was on top of Springer Mountain in Georgia October 7. Today is a good day for mountain tops.
It dawned on me today this life at Mountain Campus, through full of unique challenges is the most personally serene fall I've had in years. No homeless sleeping in cars or finding mattresses in alleys, no rainy north Georgia days to walk through giardia, no commutes after choffee dates and before scrounging for dinner.
Nope. Things are pretty simple around here. Wake up, eat, keep to the day's schedule while serving / protecting/ teaching students and other instructors, sleep, repeat.
At morning meeting today Izzie gave her class a quote "Life is a grand adventure, or not at all". Students interpreted this as unless you're on a grand adventure you're not really living.
But I've been wondering.... whether it feels like it or not.... we're always living. So maybe the true point is to LIVE a grand adventure; in southern terminuses, homelessness, unemployment, homecomings, restlessness, quiet breathing, pumpkin parties and pumpkin ales. All of it jumbled into the epic pages of simply complex adventures.
Maybe the "not at all" part isn't possible.
Yeah. I'm calling that bluff.
How could life not be a grand adventure?

A time for every purpose under heaven...

I am currently wearing an over the ears tassel hat, silk tank, long-sleeve shirt, sweater, synthetic puffy jacket, leggings, dance pants, a skirt, and socks. I kicked off the insulated furry boots to curl up on the staff house couch.
What a long day. What a full few days. Driving, scenery changes, loved ones, meaningful conversations, stressful work situations, more driving.
3 gents I love are safely home from a Mexico - Canada walk. It's so crazy how different and similar their worlds have been and are now. What they've each returned to, and how they're deciding which direction to progress in. It reminds me a lot of fall 2008 as I struggled through the southern section of the Appalachian Trail and fall 2009 as I struggled through finding a home and setting up my Montana life.
This weekend's theme has been life; what it gives us and how we feel about it. And a handful of people I love have weighed in on the matter.
Such brilliance and desperation, such blessing and restlessness. All rolled up into a breathing beating passage of time.
Two friends are reading Ecclesiastes with me as we try to find time in a 90+ hour work week to talk about what these words mean. There is a time for everything. There is much chasing after the wind and vanity in the world around us.
Yet diamonds sparkle in the rough, simple carbon having gone through enough heat and pressure to catch light, reflecting to the world around them.
How beautiful love is in times like these. How beautiful life can be with love.
As autumn light deepens colors and vibrance around me, these mountains drive me to rag tag outfits of layer after layer, I try to focus on each moment. The light, love, blessing and grace they bring.
And warmth.
What a perfect season.

Chilly Nights

September 13.
Night is so quiet here with empty tents.
Crickets chirp in a reserved sort of way, my ceiling fan hums.
A familiar almost comforting chill hits my skin on a long walk to the flush toilet.
Days are shortening exponentially, harkening back to a time not so long ago when every hour of daylight was a hope of warmth and radiance, pulsing through miles before the dark cold sparkle of night set in.
You're pushing through that now and I think about you all the more.
Le ciel est a tout le monde.
And lately I think about different places. That they grow us, but into a surprising acceptance that nothing happens there that doesn't happen here.
Sarah once told me life in France is still just life... only French.
How brilliant.
Montana. France. Washington. the Virginias.
Just life. Happening.

The only views from this cabin are the windowed doors and a skylight. I crawled onto my roof today, detailed my portal a la ciel.
I lay here now wondering these things, feeling alone, missing your strength.
What clarity comes from pondering the heavens?
I might build a ladder to attach to the cabin, or ghetto rig the sky light to open all the way; like a portal back to fairy tale land.
How odd to find myself needing you to root me.
Not knowing where or how to proceed from here I put my grumbling belly to bed.
Tomorrow is another opportunity, in the midst of shortening light, always under the same sky.

September 14.
Dusk.
How I love thee.
The way a day sinks into rest; as if my anxious ways could set over a horizon. As if the vibrance left of the days' color IS the light into my tunnel.
Insignificance and purpose all reflecting in a night sky.
Light. Color. And the appreciation for all of it when there is little around me. How brilliant each trace is.
This Earth around me breathes an excited content to nestle it's creatures in dirt and gentle breeze.

September

Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale stared back at me from the grocery store cooler tonight. I thumbed through yellow and red sunflowers, then settled into Etzler with a plate full of Indian feast.
I retreat to this room - glowing with warm wood, crimson curried colors: nature and art.
With a fan on, "Be Thankful" candle lit, and window half down I collapse into night.
After a blowing quick rain storm the driveway glistens wet. Crickets and a few lingering ciacadas sing the starlit tune.
Peace. Joy.
I smile - realizing - finally. I am here. now.
With deep breaths of relief my eyes fade shut.
No music. No phone.
Nothing.
Everything.
here. for the harvest.

"I walked past Allendale and all the lights were off" my new text said last night. Allendale, the scene for the brilliant life chapter between college and thru hiking. Kind of sad, kind of fitting.
I've spent the past week resting, recooping, and recharging from months of motion. I've spent it in the familiar stomping grounds of Roanoke / Botetourt. Life is so brilliant here; despite my transient existence where the only seeming constant is change. Coming here I seamlessly pick up the longest dearest friendships of my life with drinks, meals, walks, talks, adventure. We make quality time together a priority and nourish one another holistically.
I do miss this place while I'm gone. Still - not enough to reside here indefinately.
This week I have bounced between a fullness nearing elation and a fullness of desire deep enough to ache restless in wee small hours under a waxing moon. All within the quiet contentment trademark of my current life chapter.
Small realizations this week: my brother is an amazing person, my friends are loving hilarious and so giving, The New River is my favorite in Virginia, I adore a spacious comfy bed, and I still need to "pick a duck and shoot".
Fall season starts tommorrow while butterflies gather licking salty ground in these late summer days. Last fall homeless nights were spent in stress. Two falls ago there was summit, giardia and retreat. There is never an expectation of perfection - only a quest to live the fullest joyful life possible. Perhaps I'm fine tuning things.
Regardless, the nights are cooling, days shortening, and I intend to breathe deeper.
A quiet calling to prayer and letting guards down lures me into this new season.
Besides, the lights are off and I no longer hold keys to the past. So I look to the present and future with hope and grounded roots.