Oh, you can tell. Never made it out of the sixties today, heading into the forties tonight. I asked my wife if I should make a fire. Deviously though, as if she were the one to want it:
“Not in August!”
I understand. Summer is a state of mind at seven thousand feet. (Believe you must, so you can have one.) This year it was actually “hot” for several days, the kind of thing where you feel the sun outside but dig the coolness in the old adobe when you come back home.
It rained all day today, an actual gray drizzle. The damp sharp cold triggered vague memories of other days and other places. I put on a sweatshirt so I could leave the front door open and hear the raindrops falling through the leaves.
John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on .png)
I just now finally dug out my little Optimus space heater (love that thing) and aimed it at my toes, which have been enshrouded with Alpaca sox for several nights now. Oh how I resist. No! Not in August!
I am next to a creek, only about 2600 feet, but farther north. There is a lot to like about Oregon, but I know that I am a southern girl in heart and body. I would make a good snow bird, if I wasn’t so stuck on the grandkids.
One thing I like about this little break is the return of green grass and the weeds I like to eat. We got a good rain last week, and rain in August used to be unusual for here, but now all weather is unusual, apparently. September might be the new August. Who knows.
I have no idea what the weather’s like in Oregon, or what Oregon itself is like. Have seen pictures of the coast and near Mt. Hood that blew my mind. Went through Pendleton on a bus at night when I was just a lad.
We’re supposedly in a terror-inducing primal drought, except it’s rained for weeks. Everything is green. It’s crazy. Been nippy, too, for days.
Ah ha, that’s easy for you to say when it’s 101 here in Texas today.
It’ll warm up for a bit here now. Mid-eighties on the way.
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