 |
Grants Pass on NW A Street |
Moving to Oregon at age 19, I had never spent a winter without ice and snow. That first summer was completely dry, then it began to rain at the end of September and didn't seem to let up until spring. I had the odd sense that we had completely skipped past winter. We do get the odd bit of snow now and then, but it's nearly always melted by mid-day.
My idea of stormy days while growing up were for snugging in and working on projects. Our school had three-week breaks between each quarter (eight weeks during the summer) which meant that our winter break was quite cold and often stormy - with any luck, ha! Mom would urge us to hurry through our daily chores in the mornings so that we could work on our projects in the afternoons. This could be quilting, embroidery, crocheting, macrame (yep, it was the 70's), painting... pretty much whatever we wanted to work on assuming we had the supplies on hand, or else we'd pick some things up the next time we went to town. Our house had a wood-burning furnace in the basement that did a fine job of heating - especially when sitting next to the chimney or a register!
There have been many times over the years when I would eye the rainy, cold winter day and wished I were home quilting with some hot tea rather than being at work. I still appreciated the change in seasons though since I felt it would otherwise be quite monotonous.
I realize now that I somewhere along the line, my thoughts on this had changed. A lot of it had to do with shopping for the same groceries year-round. It also had a lot to do with the year we got a dog. As a pup, she needed daily walks, and during the summer, she often got two. But as the rains came in the fall and the days shortened, it became miserable, not to mention somewhat dangerous as our street is on a steep, winding hill with no sidewalks or adequate lighting. I really dreaded winter. After her first couple of years she no longer required daily walks, especially with her "invisible fence" collar which allows her to run around in a nice large perimeter.
Although I didn't have to walk in the dark and rain anymore, I had fallen into the habit of viewing the change to colder weather with negativity and was thinking that it would be all right to live in a mono-climate.
My visit to Iowa last month rebooted my perspective. I had not been back to the Midwest during autumn since I'd moved out here. So we attended the Fall Festival in Kalona which is a weekend gathering of the community.
It is held annually the last weekend of September at Kalona's historical village which also contains the town's visitor center and the Mennonite Museum. So the Fall Festival adds food booths, run mainly by churches and other non-profit groups, as well as a variety of vendors selling wares either merchandise from their shops, handcrafted items, or antiques. There are also demonstrationsof activities such as chainsaw sculptures being made, field corn being shelled and ground into cornmeal which is then available for purchase, and apple butter being made over an open fire. They had a large galvanized metal bin with shelled field corn for the kids to play in. Here is a photo of Isabel and Zoe playing in it. Wow, that corn makes a lot of white dust!
I noticed this event was an opportunity for people in the community to be able to interact with each other. It also seems to serve the purpose of celebrating the harvest, the culmination of everyone's hard work over the previous months, growing crops in fields and household gardens.
All at once I realized what autumn has to offer - harvest time is a time of gathering and preserving and it gives a sense of the reprieve winter has to offer. I found myself looking forward to pulling out sweaters and scarves and wooly socks.
And this time when the rains came, I looked out at the sky, the trees and grass, and gave thanks that all these things work together for the benefit of the earth and for the people. I also baked muffins and pulled out my knitting. Ah, life is good!
No comments:
Post a Comment