A new photoperiod
Leaf-peeping in a mean season
Today, the angle of light, the incremental tapering of the photoperiod, the crisp in the morning air spoke powerfully to me of fall.
Restless, I bolted for the car. I wanted out. I needed out. I wanted to go to the mountains. Except the roads. Or down to Augusta. Except the roads. Or to see water—maybe the Ware Shoals dam? I wanted out, anywhere, into fall, to see the play of colors against blue, blue skies and feel the change enter my bones…
But of course, the husband wouldn’t budge. Too much to do, he said, noting tartly that I, too, had too much to be to too many people to even be thinking about gadding about, frittering away time and money.
I left anyway, but I kept my circuit small. I gathered greens at the community garden with one of the neighbors, then decided to treat myself to a fancy coffee at the local coffee place. (Salted caramel creme brulee, half-sweet).
When I got there, I discovered Heather had invited local crafters to set up booths on her little green—charming and festive and completely unexpected against the backdrop of the burnt-out shell of our downtown, just a few blocks away. It was just dozen little canopies in gay colors with quilts and crocheted stuffed animals and people sitting in the sun with their kids. But for a starved extrovert like me, it was almost as good as the state fair.
Half an hour later, I was on my way home. I had talked up every single vendor, purchased a honey-citrus lip balm and a gardenia-scented goats milk soap and enjoyed the few moments of fleeting connection. My lips feel plump and moist now, and I’m rubbing the soap bar against my face and inhaling exquisite breaths of gardenia as I write…
Sigh… And as I relax into the reflection that I’ve spent the last few weeks on split screen. Wreckage. Recovery. Stumbling around in the dark, then launched back into work and struggling toward normalcy.
Gradually, the world has sought to right itself. In Laurens County now, it’s just a few people without power vs. the constant hum of generators. Isolated gaps in cell coverage vs. complete silence save for the car radio. Ice and milk have migrated back to the shelves at Ingles, though maybe not yet as far north as its Black Mountain distribution center. FEMA set up its tents behind city hall—and then last week wrapped up their work and decamped.
And no, people are not satisfied—are they ever satisfied? But more people got what they needed than not, and also—and this point must be emphasized…
Society did not collapse.
No feral bands of drug addicts and miscreants swarmed up to the hills, or emerged from rural hideaways, to loot and rape and destroy all in their path. And the so-called defenders …? Offering their services as wandering paladins? Have ended up looking like loons.
Like that one guy who maybe thought he was Clint Eastwood but ended up creating a moment of instant karma for himself when he talked too much smack about FEMA around Lake Lure. Or that armed group spotted hassling FEMA workers on the Tennessee side of the border near Elk Hill a few days later. Those folks made a lot of noise on social media and radio call-in shows for a while. But once it sunk in there were no pedophiles at Comet Pizza—I mean, no feds in black boots destroying supplies in Burnsville—they noticed no one wanted their kind of help and slunk away.
My own self I saw plenty of examples of individual hostility and aggression—a fat guy packing heat in a really short line at the grocery store, loudly threatening everyone in earshot and insisting that a completely peaceful scene and completely normal crowd control measures were somehow evidence of imminent social breakdown. The woman at the door blandly assured him she was packing, too, and then politely ignored him. We all did.
A certain amount of this is, of course, perfectly understandable among tired, overstressed, borderline desperate people. But what no one’s writing about, or posting on social media about, is how people worked together—God knows not always efficiently but for the most part well. How they helped each other, put their own lives and safety on the line for each other; how some died; how by God we saved each other. We didn’t devolve into beasts and predators—we connected, we cooperated, and overcame…
If the hills still thronged with mountain balladeers, they’d be writing epic songs about the men who reattached the 36-inch bypass line in Asheville, restoring a vital water connection for the city and the entire valley in a dozen days. The news cameras haven’t swung our way since Hurricane Milton knocked us out of the spotlight, but in the quiet I promise you women are nursing their babies to sleep with lullabies about how mamma and daddy and all the neighbors put shoulder to shoulder and rebuilt the bridge to the main road.
Out in the world, folks are watching football—it’s the perfect Saturday for it. Or they’re doom-scrolling news feeds, alert to the latest twists and turns from the campaign trail. Or if they’re plant people with nowhere in particular to be, they’re headed north to Flat Rock for one of the most anticipated events of the season: the fall open house at Mr. Maple. (So bummed I’m not headed there.)
As for me, I’ve accepted my homebound fate. Got some beautiful greens awaiting
my attention. Not to mention a table covered with fall tomatoes waiting to be turned into sauce and fall poblano peppers that survived the storm unscathed— seriously, they’re among the prettiest we’ve ever grown, and they’re just begging to be plucked, stuffed, and freezed. (And one blessing since the storm: we had to throw every morsel of food out so there’s even freezer space to hold it all.)
Folks are shooting in the distance. Hunting wild turkey no doubt. It reminds me that, right next door, my neighbors are living in a diseased dream world where voting for fascism makes their hearts go pitter-pat.
I guess if Trump wins, I’ll go to PawnWerks and buy that arsenal I’ve been thinking about for several years now. A 9 mm. A 12-gauge. A .22. Maybe, I’ll even form a gun club—teach all my lib teacher friends to shoot. But in the meantime, the photoperiod shrinks. The year wind inexorably winds down. There’s plants to grow if we want fresh eats in January.
Time to quit playing on the computer and go outside.