Sayonara, Indian Summer

Cold! A sharp north wind has appeared, making the daytime temperatures feel lower than they probably are, and giving the nights a bite. It's beautiful, though. Out walking this morning, early, the sun just cresting the roof line of the houses, a persimmon tree, bare branches hung with fruit, each vivid orange globe seemingly lit from within. Whether it's the time of day or the time of year, that inner-light effect turns every autumn into a visual stunner. And the cold clear nights makes the stars hard and bright; every night, just before I go to bed, I step out on my deck and say goodnight to my old friend, Orion, the first constellation other than the Big Dipper that I learned to recognize. Always nice to welcome him back to the neighborhood.

Bird brain

Last night I went to the bird identification workshop offered by Yolo Audubon. I went because, though I like birds and enjoy looking at them, I can scarcely tell the difference between a chicken and a chicken hawk (and I don't really know what a chicken hawk looks like). The program included a lot of slides of various similar kinds of birds, the challenge to the audience being to say which one was which. I had no idea, of course (though I did know the mourning dove wasn't the ring-necked dove). But most of the differences came down to things like one bird having a darker stripe on its head (except when it didn't) or a larger patch of rosiness around its throat (except in the spring). Or something. All the birds were interesting, though, and beautiful to look at.

Despite my appalling ignorance, however, I was encouraged to sign up and take part in the annual Christmas Bird Count. So I did, and, along with my friend Dana, will accompany a much more experienced (and I hope infinitely patient) birder come Sunday, Dec. 16, out in the wide open spaces south of Winters. I hope there are a lot of chickens out there.

Speechless

I'm not much of a TV watcher. If you don't count baseball games, I've probably seen fewer than 100 hours of it all year. But I have been following the writers' strike. I occasionally write for pay. Once it's out there, in the world, it can kind of get away from you; no telling who's xeroxing it, or using it whole cloth in something they're writing. Not that this has happened to me, or at least I have no knowledge of it. But the point is, what I write, what anyone writes, is a singular thing, and wouldn't exist without the brain behind it. So it only seems fair and equitable that writers should share in profits generated when what they've written appears on the Internet, or on a DVD, or is transmitted in any other fashion. Kindergarten was supposed to teach us all to share. Were the studio execs absent that day?

For a look at the writers' take on all this, check out Speechless. Ditto the writers' blog. And if signing petitions is your sort of thing, you can do that here.

Back in the saddle again

I fell while hiking four weeks ago—caught my toe on a ridiculously small stub of some shrub or other and went down like I'd been sandbagged—and though it felt like every inch of the front of me made contact with the earth at one and the same moment, my right knee apparently struck a millisecond or two ahead of the rest. Diagnosis: a bruise behind my kneecap that has kept me off my bicycle ever since.

Until today. Today I rode again—not far, just to the Co-op and then took the long way home—but after four weeks of not riding, just being on the bike for that short time was exhilarating. The sore knee has kept me from riding, from doing any brisk walking, from doing much of any exercise of any kind. Not being able to do those things put me into a serious decline; been feeling quasi-blue and shut in. I'm not a rabid athlete by anyone's definition, but the lack of exercise, of being outside and breathing deeply, was beginning to wear on me. (Among other things, this blog has suffered from my lack of energy/motivation.)

So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that even though my knee is still sore to the touch, I'll be able to ride like I did today—easily and (relatively) pain free. I can cocoon only so long.