Water Signs

The clocks are re-set; Halloween is over.  Rainfall graced the streets with a few ponds and made the curbs small versions of the bigger dams that surround the local rivers.  The calendar page reads November and a brief glance out my window makes clear the reason that Portland, Oregon was named after Portland Maine.
Orange is ubiquitous.  Butternut squash, pumpkins and candy corn, Indian corn, popcorn, persimmons and a new crop of navels. Leaves...many leaves. Fall is inevitable.
It means I must stow away all my fishing equipment until Spring...except for that travel rod which offers hope when snow is on the ground.  I reluctantly remove all the gear from metric and wonder where the chains I think I have might be.  Time to think about holidays and winter travel and of course, time to take stock of the previous year.
I've heard this is the time when some folks think the moon is in Scorpio.  I don't follow astrology, but history shows us that strange things do happen between the first of November and the end of the year.  Just last year I found myself in the hospital for an unplanned visit.  Fortunately only overnight, but it goes with all the data about this "time." Age has taught me to take things slowly, when possible, and live from day to day.  For an ever vigilant person like me, that's a moment to moment challenge.  But I'm learning.
The days ahead have some wonderful things to anticipate.  Cold, wet weather with warm drinks and good books to curl up with and contemplate.  Visions of the Spring to come.  Fingering the grain of years and people passed.  Realizing what stays in the consciousness and no doubt always will.  Writer Neel Mukergee has called this chewing the cud of memory.  Do you do this?  I find that it increases with age as well.  Maybe that's what we do...most everything we do... play and re-play.  And re-play some more.  Isn't that what a blog is all about?

Yesterday I spent much of the day watching the Breeder's Cup Championship races from Keeneland in Lexington, Kentucky.  I anticipate this day for weeks and when it finally ends, I feel bit of post part depression.  Maybe that's the wrong term, but in a way the images of anticipation are, in a way, something we give birth to, aren't they?  I have no real sadness, rather the loss of something to look forward to.  Maybe the next time I walk 6 blocks, sloshing in the icy rain, dipping my feet into newly created lagoons, I'll think of a pasture and a new crop of  2 year olds, romping in the Bluegrass state.  That  will get me through the darkest days and still have plenty of time for painting watercolors in my mind of rainbow and brook trout.