Looking West One Morning
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John M. Scalzi is the AOL Journals' "Blogfather" -- the leader, the contracted Muse, inspiration to one and all. His AOL Journal, By The Way, is the source for the "Weekend Assignment" -- a meme designed to promote exposition and exploration of a topic for the entertainment and edification of the AOL Journals community and the 'blogosphere' at large. John usually posts his assignments on Thursday evening and you have all weekend to get them finished. You can get this week's assignment here. Don't forget to post the URL to your blog in the comments section of the assignment so we all can find it.
Weekend Assignment #27: There are 12 months in the year. Which is your favorite? Give us one good reason why.
Extra Credit: Which month comes in second?
Dear John,
I hope this epistle finds you in fine fettle. How is the Rough Guide coming?
I've followed with interest Athena's evolution these first weeks in kindergarten. She is growing so fast and smart as a whippet, too. Truly blessed you are, my friend.
Since you ask, yes, this is my favorite time of year. And, oddly enough, my favorite month of the year is October. The bugs have fled for the most part. The days are often warm and sunny while the nights are crisp and make for superior sleeping. There is a scent to the air that is almost indescribable, pungent cinnamon and ginger, smoke from burning leaves and wood stoves in the evening, the smell of vegetative decay rising from newly turned earth being planted to a cover crop.
Some nights there is a ring of ice crystals around the moon foretelling the coming of snow and winter. The storms of October aren't usually fierce, like September's hurricanes or November's gales. Rain and occasionally snow, but not the driving, relentless deluges that characterize other months.
October is the last month for the fairs. But not any fairs -- the ones held in October are the biggies for the year. Eastern States Exposition in Massachusetts, the Fryeburg Fair here in Maine, the Tunbridge Worlds Fair in Vermont, perhaps the sleaziest traveling carnival left on the planet.
Harvest festivals abound as the last of the year's provender is laid up in larder, root cellar and storehouse. It is time for apples and apple cider, pumpkins, gourds and winter squash, freshly dug potatoes, braids of onions, shallots, and garlic curing on sun porches. Grains have been harvested, dried and threshed, put up in granaries and corn put up in ricks.
The light in October is truly wondrous to my eyes. It's my favorite time to tramp the fields and woods. I meet the occasional bird hunter, or, more likely, his dog. Sometimes I run into bears filling their gullets in a single-minded rush to pack the pounds on for a winter's hibernation. I'm often tracked by young coyotes, curious yet fearful of this two-legged interloper into their domain. Deer have usually fled long before I make an appearance. But if I sit quietly at the edge of a field for a half hour or so they eventually emerge from the shadows to graze on what greens are still poking up through clumps of tough brown rushes and sedges. So often I get caught up in what is going on around me that I forget to even take the camera out of the case.
So, those are some of the reasons I love October the best of all the months. Although, I am kind of partial to September, too. It has my birthday, and the tourists leave by Labor Day, so we can finally get to town in something under a half hour (it's only seven miles away, after all). I like watching summer end and fall begin. It isn't bad -- but it doesn't hold a candle to October, now does it?
Give Krissy and Athena warm hugs from us all. We're thinking of you.
Grins and giggles abound,
wil
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