snow and rainbows

well, it's still a few weeks before equinox and the official start of autumn, but we're full into fall now in Durango. Evening temps are dipping below forty degrees in some places (much like the bay area, we experience a multitude of microclimates here), and lots of long rainstorms, interspersed with thunder, hail and rainbows, and then, when the clouds clear, the mountain tops are dusted with a good coat of snow. i'm beginning to distinguish the smell of an appoaching snow storm, even. and to do that, one must slow down....something i'm finally finding myself capable of doing, which is another sure sign of autumn's arrival.

in fact, people i've missed are resurfacing all over the place, all expressing the sort of peace that follows the collapse into exhaustion. i think everyone, like me, is enjoying the late sunrise and warm beds swimming in cold starry night air. the pungent, alert sense of summer has given way to the smoky, layered mustiness of fall. people have stories to tell, and time to tell them. i'm listening.

i spent this morning at the farm, hearing the news from the ground up. The worms told great tales of deep, penetrating rains, the carrots and tomatoes radiated the wonders of insulation from beneath the frost cover i tuck them under each night, and the radish seed pods expressed the need to prepare for winter. The tomatillos finally revealed themselves at the base of their curtain-like tent homes, and the lady bugs and beetles held still as i picked their dormant, cold flushed bodies off plant leaves to examine their delicate exoskeletons. I blessed the harvest of lettuce, carrots, chard, kale, beans and tomatoes, and relished in the abundance suddenly present to me after the months of blissful, but rapid indulgence. something comes with the light lower in the sky: the sun casts rays in such a way that every detail is illuminated --everything becomes more than it has been, and one can't help but stop and take it all in.

all the way in.

we are all so rich.