I pledged never to complain about Malibu weather and kept that promise. To complain in a land where sunshine, blue skies, and seventy-degree temperatures abound seemed outright ungrateful. But truth be told I did miss one thing: the breathtaking colors of autumn.
As luck would have it, our arrival in Nashville somehow triggered uncharacteristically warm weather, delaying and to some extent blunting the colorful explosion. But I’m still not complaining. The late arrivals of reds, oranges, purples, and yellows only served to increase the anticipation and joy.
I went for an early morning run at beautiful Radnor Lake yesterday morning, and although the heavy rains had officially ended, the sun remained missing as I cut through the fog and the thick morning mist. The lake itself was quiet, as were the homes on the residential portion of the run. A lazy guard dog registered my presence with a lone, halfhearted yelp, and a family of deer silently grazed in someone’s backyard. On the far side of the park I marveled at the cacophony of a massive family reunion of birds high in the treetops and on my return noticed that the only sound was the squish-squash of the wet, crunchy leaves underneath my feet. It was a peaceful, soul-cleansing run.
I read that rainy, overcast days increase the intensity of the brilliant colors, and I believe it. I stopped frequently to take disappointing pictures, disappointing only because they are incapable of capturing the beauty.
For some reason the irony of it all dawned on me as I ran along the path soaking in the scene. The spectacular beauty of the autumn transformation occurs because the leaves are dying. Winter is approaching, and the cycle of life is actually taking a downward turn.
I was not raised to think that aging and dying involved beauty, but that seems like something worth considering.
We signed our youngest daughter up for TIME magazine her senior year of high school when she indicated an interest in international affairs, but when she took off to Seattle for college I became the beneficiary of knowing what’s up in the world. As time flies and all that, that daughter is about to begin her senior year of college, and I thought I would sneak up to see her for a couple of days last week before the entire college experience slips away. As fate would have it I was reading TIME just before the trip and stumbled across the magazine’s inaugural run at identifying the “World’s Greatest Places.” The list contained one-hundred places from forty-eight countries on six continents and was chosen using factors such as “quality, originality, innovation, sustainability, and influence.” One of those one-hundred places is in Seattle, a restaurant featuring Southern food named JuneBaby.
On an amazing trip to India a couple of years ago I experienced an unfortunate illness in the magical city of Shimla in the southwestern ranges of the Himalayas. It was awful. Altitude sickness was a potential culprit given the location, timing, and some of the symptoms, but that never was confirmed. Just to be safe I concluded that I should avoid higher elevations for the rest of my life. Such drastic solutions come to mind more often as one ages.
“Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
I want to see everything there is to see.
Our 2008 move from Mississippi to Malibu sounds like a seismic culture shift, but moving from affluent, artsy, coastal Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to affluent, artsy, coastal Malibu was not as mind-blowing as you’d think. Okay, it was mind-blowing, just not as mind-blowing as you’d think.
Today is my wife’s birthday, and the specific number is none of your business (or, apparently, mine!). Jody’s parents both worked as tax preparers back in 19-whenever when she made her grand entrance on April 14—talk about demanding attention from the very start! She deserves a lot of attention. Jody is, hands down, the most impressive person that I know.
Starting to Look Up 