A beautiful Mass last night at St. Michael's in Gastonia. Among other things, they've got a new choir director, and the music was startlingly good. Ran into many friends on our way out, then had dinner in Belmont. A longish walk with Dora in the dark once we got home --- even at 10 p.m. the air was steamy, which is relatively unusual for here. But this feast also marks the midpoint of August, when you can start to imagine that the summer will end sometime.
All too fast, really, in some regards, but that's always how it goes. But here it is: today. It won't stand still, yet we have it. And maybe in the high country, while we hold the day in our hands a little while, we'll still smell the future, the autumn in the air, and that will be good.
For some years after we moved here, on a chosen day in mid-August, we used to meet friends in the mountains above Blowing Rock, at a picnic area with a creek winding through, for a "Last Hurrah" before the school year began. I still remember the first time we went. We'd lived here maybe ten days, and people we'd met at church had invited us to join them. Going, we got lost --- my new friend's directions had told me to turn the wrong way on the Blue Ridge Parkway --- so by the time we got there, certain of my children were fuming (of course Mom got lost, she ruins everything), and others were self-detonating with energy. As we spilled out of the van, a little boy about the 6-year-old Viking's size came running out of the bushes with a stick. He brandished it at the Viking and went, "Yaaaaaaaah!" The Viking, with a toy sword or something in his hand, went, "Yaaaaaaaaah!" Then they both ran away into the bushes.
So after that we went every year. Sometimes the weather was glorious: children in the creek with nets and jars to catch minnows, mothers on lawn chairs in the sun, dogs lazing or going hiking with the teenagers. Sometimes the weather was not glorious. I have distinct memories of standing under the rhododendron with my miserable, terrified dog, trading jokes with a friend with a towel over her head --- as if either the rhododendron or the towel would do anything to keep the rain off us. But when it was beautiful, it was beautiful. I remember hiking part of the loop trail once with the same friend and the same dog, in brilliant sunshine, with wildflowers grown tall and gone to seed waving all around us, and that feeling in the air of the season's change. And nothing could have been more perfect. I would bottle that moment, if I could, to keep through the year and sip like a good whiskey, full of fire, whenever I needed to be back in that perfect, balanced moment between summer and fall, when time did not stand still but seemed to, because it was enjoying itself.
Of course I've gilded that moment in my mind. Not that there was anything that special about it. I hardly ever see that particular friend anymore. Our children have grown and gone from us. I've been to the mountains a million times since, and there's always something nice to hold onto --- but it's never that instant again, that apprehension of perfect beauty and happiness, which I know was a vision of things to come, but was also a thing that swept over me and past, like a wave at the beach, breaking and falling to pieces on the sand, regathering itself but never exactly the same again. In The Prelude, Wordsworth speaks of spots of time, and this was one of them --- but they really only become that polished thing under the chafing of your memory, like a rock tumbler, turning and turning a remembered moment until it shines more brightly than it could possibly have done in that brief flash of reality, there and gone, almost before you notice. What you notice, really, is your own hindsight. And then you spend the rest of your life trying to catch it up again.
So we're going to the mountains again today, just the Artgirl and I, for a Last Hurrah with Dora, and it will be good, I'm sure. It won't be that, because that is elusive, but if I can let go my desire for it to be that, then something else beautiful is bound to come to me.
But this is (mostly) a blog about clothes.
So here's Camellia without a belt pack.
And with:
AND with a light top layer that I'll take off now and put in my daypack, in case we stay up there into the evening:
Told you I was happy about these cropped tees. I really am. This is a thrifted Icebreaker merino base-layer tee that works just as well as a very light pullover. It used to be tunic-length, which I had to admit to myself was unflattering. Now it's the perfect light top layer for cool-but-not-chilly temperatures: easy on, easy off.
I'm not hiking in these Birkenstocks, just wearing them for in the car and after the hike. Here are the Birks I'm hiking in:
All ready to go.
On a related note, I ran into my friend Kristen at Mass last night, wheeling herself along on one of those things that you rest your knee on while you walk with the other leg. I said, "Did you hurt yourself?" No, she said, she'd had bunion surgery. I said, "That's exactly what I've been trying to put off." She said something about not being able to wear shoes, and I thought, "I have bought shoes around the fact of my bunion for years now . . . " But we'll see how the foot feels on the trail. Even in Birk boots, it kind of hurt last time. Of course, I was hot and generally miserable, and every little twinge was amplified by my ratty mood.
Gosh, I don't want to have foot surgery. But . . . how much does my foot hurt? Honestly, most of the time it doesn't, because (see bought shoes around the fact of my bunion, above). But sometimes it does. I really hope it doesn't today. Because I do not want even to think about having foot surgery. At least if someday I start to think that I might want to, I know now whom to talk to about what to expect.
Got my hat, got my daypack, got water bottles to fill. Got my daughter, got my dog. It will be a good day.
So I might text the daughter to see if she's up yet, then take the dog for a leg stretch and potty stop before we all pile into the car.
More later, maybe.