A little bored at soccer practice, I felt the call of the sun peaking through the leaves….The temps were dipping below 60, and that certain chill in the early autumn air was unmistakable.

What I saw when I looked through the lens was that ever-battle between the seasons and the sun. Yet, despite the sun’s greatest attempts to hold autumn at bay for just a few more weeks, change is inevitable.

Lesson in there, I believe, if we stop thinking too much about it and just let it simmer for a spell….

My younger children attended a neighbor’s birthday party this weekend at a local farm called North Run. Beautiful place. Each year, they do a corn maze that is in the image of something rather extraordinary. I believe the first year they designed a blue crab; another year, they patterned GO RAVENS with a Ravens helmet. This year, their eighth in cutting designer corn mazes, they created an elaborate statue of liberty.

I never even knew they were there (located just off of Greenspring Valley Road). What we found, though, was an autumnal gold mine, complete with a genuine pumpkin patch (they bring large branch cutters to help you cut your pumpkins when you’ve made your choice), hay rides, a hay field playground, and a petting/feeding zoo with chickens, pigs, sheep, goats, and cows. They also have a store filled with fresh produce and homemade jams and preserves.

Most important, though, was the friendly and kind demeanor of everybody who worked there, from the owners to the seasonal help. My kids and I were treated wonderfully from beginning to end.

I took the above picture while my kids were in the pumpkin patch, making new memories to kick off the autumn season, our favorite time of year. I hope each of you can afford a few hours in the coming weekends to stop by your local farms to partake in a little seasonal relaxation. Have a cup of cider, walk the maze, and absorb the change in seasons. This beauty lasts but a few weeks.

I happened upon these early budding inkberries last week at my daughter’s horse farm, and the memories of early autumn in my backyard appeared as if they were made yesterday.

My mother would give me that standard lecture every morning or afternoon that I would leave the house to play. Me–the Tom Sawyer wanna-be in the neighborhood, nearly courageous enough to take any risks necessary to have some fun, would listen to her with a happy grin, as if I were taking it all in.

“Don’t leave the neighborhood, don’t get in anybody’s car, and for goodness sake, stay away from those inkberry bushes across the street. I’ll never get your clothes clean again if you keep popping those berries. They’re poisonous, you know!”

Invariably, I’d leave the neighborhood, usually by car, and eventually come home with inkberry stains all over me. Mom would yell, but we had fun, and she knew it.

To me, these inkberries recall calmer days filled with reckless wonder and abandon. I think I’ll head out for a little walk and find me a few to pinch between my fingers before sunset… :)

I feel like Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein, though I just got all my hair chopped off today and I can’t do that mad laugh that he does so, so well.

All else, though, applies. Me -n- my Mac, we’re Puttin’ on the Ritz.

Here’s the background: I bought my G4 Titanium Powerbook at the end of the first week in October of 2001. It was a brisk autumn afternoon, and I remember leaving with my new Powerbook, clutching it as if it were the baby that would be born to us just two weeks later.

Madelyn just turned six, and as she now dances ever-so freely and innocently in this early evening, this eve before we finally turn our clocks back an hour, I write this entry on my Powerbook, a loved and worn friend resembling the Velveteen Rabbit more than anything else. The sound doesn’t work, the cd drive is cracked but usable, the firewire port is no longer on fire, and the battery has long since overheated and sports black singed marks where it just couldn’t give anymore.

It includes a 10-gig hard drive (stop that snickering!). Yet, I have successfully resuscitated it with a gig and a half to spare. I’ve got my essential software loaded, and a core 37 songs on iTunes that, when I twist the earbuds just right, I can hear Dylan, Zep, and Jerry G reminding me that the music never stops, and every little thing’s gonna be all right.

I just ordered the brand new battery pack, the one that I should have received for free when the recalls went out years ago. I saved nearly $50 on eBay (reliable seller; otherwise, I would have never taken the chance), and it should be here by Wednesday.

I’ve priced portable external hard drives, and i can get a fine 120-gig Iomega portable drive for $129, which I’ll get in the next week or so. It’s got a USB drive, so I don’t have to worry about the fire-less firewire…

This, I hope, will last until Madelyn begins 1st grade next August, when I’ll have the money to get my new Powerbook.

But that will be a bittersweet moment for me. It will be nice to have all the new technology, the DVD-R drive, the 17-inch laptop screen, and all the speed and space I’ll ever need to write and design. What I will mourn, though, is the passing of this old laptop, my friend, my brother-at-my-side since before my daughter was born. We have been through over 75 original pieces of writing that have found their way in print, and countless other ideas that continue to develop on and off this screen. We have spent marathon writing sessions in myriad coffee houses and cafes, learned of breaking news–both good and horrific–as it developed online, and of course, shared my life as it unfolded as well with all of you in this blog.

I hope my laptop, my friend, holds up until next August. He is as a part of my muse as my daybook, and I look forward to this Swan Song Run for the next 10 months as I work on another book, share my life with you, and celebrate life as I’ve never celebrated it before.

Well the sun’s not so hot in the sky today,

And you know I can see summertime slipping away. . .

It is the last day of August, and I am home, feeling icky all over from my usual back-to-school cold that grips me every year before Labor Day weekend. I have a fine history of having so-they-say tasty hamburgers and hot dogs that, because of the lovely cold, I cannot taste.

Dare I predict that the same will happen tomorrow?

Hardly a bold prediction, I do admit. Case in point: a plastic lid just fell down on the heat element of the dishwasher and is melting. Do I smell the odor of burning plastic?

nay.

Apparently it’s quite bad.

But with all this comes, wonderfully so, the month of September.

James Taylor, on his last original CD, October Road, includes as his first track the song, “September Grass.”

Do you see those ants dancin’ on a blade of grass?

Do you know what I know? That’s you and me baby.

We’re so small and the world’s so vast,

We found each other down in the grass.

Won’t you lie down here right now

In this September Grass.

The smell of September grass, the shift of days as the run of temps in the 80’s replaces the more scorching 90’s,  the presence of pumpkins and the hint of harvests as our weekend drives get more colorful with each passing day.

With these things comes the melancholy, too. The retreat within, where all that has ever mattered to me fills me, consumes me, as I ponder life, love, and all that falls between.

I look forward to this period, for immediately following the melancholy comes a certain burst of creativity and product, where I will write my best stuff of the year in the weeks that follow. It is when I wish every day of my life were so intense, so productive, so rich.

And maybe this year, I will be able to hold on to it a little longer than usual. Much has happened to me this year, and so I believe that anything is possible if I put my mind to it.

Happy Birthday to RC! Welcome to the 42-ers!

And here’s a special prayer for my sister in Florida who just beat her cancer. She fell yesterday and broke her hip. . .Like I said, it’s been an intense year.

Won’t you lie down in this September Grass. . . .

After dropping H off for gymnastics practice at 6:45 a.m., I headed north to find pastures blanketed in early morning mist. It was a very zen experience for me, as I was exercising great patience in waiting for the right shoot to present itself to me. There were several stops that i could have made, but I did not feel as if they were the shoots meant to be taken this morning.

Then, upon cresting a hill on Tufton Road, I saw this huge cloud still clinging to earth. It had not yet let go into the early morning and rise away into the day. I turned off of Tufton and went deeply into the mist, but I could not find the place that called me this morning. I know I was close. Very close. But indeed, the mist eluded me this morning.

This photo, and the others below, are the best that I could come up with. Time was against me on this shoot, as I should have been in the pastures around 6:30 or so to really capture the pre-dawn light sifting through the low-lying mist and find that one place where i was meant to be.Perhaps, though, this is where I was meant to be today, so that I may remember it well and return another autumn morning, where my own fog may lift long enough for me to find that elusive perfect shot.

Fun nevertheless!

I am leaving school now, as traces of dusk hint on the horizon. The temperatures fall so subtly, like the few leaves that have already found their way to the ground. The humid breezes begin to shift into their blustery, autumn siblings.

This is the best time of autumn, transition within transition, the marrow within the veins of each leaf falling.

The very core of life itself.