January 15th ~ Saturday (but it felt like Sunday all day/gray and foggy)
If the Creature from the Black Lagoon ever needed a vacation home ~ I’m sure he’d be able to find one out here … gray skies, deep forests, marshy bogs and swirling fog. The ideal environment to carry a damsel in distress into or out of!
It’s Saturday today. One of those days that feels so much like a Sunday and when you realize it is not, it’s like getting an added day to the weekend. Bonus! Earlier this afternoon I was out walking Annie down the cliff road and found myself half looking over my shoulder now and then to make sure some creepy fish creature wasn’t following us! The fog has that affect on me! It’s just so ethereal. It hides things … and then reveals what you didn’t know was there. It’s so fluid … and it’s kind of creepy, kind of cozy, kind of mysterious all wrapped up in cotton batting. I’ve never seen the movie (The Creature from the Black Lagoon) and am half-tempted to watch it if I can find it online tonight. But with heavy fog blanketing the house … I’m just not sure I have the guts to do it!
I still think I should hire a turtle to walk the dog … 1.5 miles in just under 50 minutes. It’s hard to get my steps in when she is SO slow! It felt like we were going 6 feet a minute but after quick calculations, we were going a speedy 165 feet a minute! Yeah – whatever, a turtle could have beaten us home!
But despite the chill (or because of it), today was one of those perfectly perfect November days. The lighting whispered November … wood smoke curled up my nose (I couldn’t see it but I sure could smell it. Lovely!) … and I could hear the eagles signaling along the cliff (an unlikely high pitched screech-whistle) but couldn’t see them until one emerged from the fog and silently glided over our heads. Amazing! I watched him circle around and disappear back into the fog at the cliff’s edge. Gone in an instant … as if I had just imagined him.
From fall to spring the landscape doesn’t change much in the forest/here on the island … evergreens, as always, are emerald. The grass is kelly green. The laurels are all a shiny deep pine. The naked trees are still bare but the rhodies already have fat buds nestled amongst their leaves. The moss is thick and bright lime. Today the tree trunks stood out against the sky like black silhouettes reaching up, up – only today to gray cotton batting (and not storm clouds or blue skies). As we walked along I noticed how quiet it was … the silence of the fog. When we’d pass one house – another one further up would come into view … peering out of the grayness. The houses more than two beyond were lost in the haze. Looking up I noticed the treetops were swallowed up but every once in a while a ghost image would appear and then be gone again.
Something about the air and the coloring and light made me feel like I should go home and simmer some cranberries or whip up some mashed potatoes! It was unusually cold/raw but it was invigorating just the same. But, I wasn’t exactly dressed for a slower than turtle speed walk and by the time we got back home my thighs were cold and I could feel the coldness emanate off me once back inside in my cozy kitchen.
And there it was … a perfect autumn day! It sure makes for a shorter winter when an autumn day comes two months late and yeah, I’ll take another November day (one of my favorite months) whenever I can get one. If water is rushing through the roadside gully, that means that there is no snow or ice and that spring is just a breath away. I’m all for that!
Our winters are short (though wet and dark) out here and I know that in a few weeks those fat buds on the rhodies and azaleas will become fatter and the willow trees will start turning more golden yellow than they already seem to be … and the two inch daffs and iris leaves pushing up through the wet dirt in my driveway garden bed will be another few inches taller. Already! And every little thing will start waking up and preparing for early spring. We’re getting lighter every day … and maybe just by one minute at a time but that’s okay! We’re on our way!
And it is even better when we get a perfectly perfect November day … in the middle of January.