Johnny Case in Wonderland . . . hopelessly adrift in popular culture

Another hard frost this morning.  Three days ago an unexpected wind storm broke a 15 foot branch off of the top of one the birch trees in my front yard, which was pretty scary.  There’s no danger of it hitting the house, but the kids and I routinely play tag and pickle on the grass underneath those trees and it would’ve seriously injured any of us—at least—had it struck us while we were frolicking underneath it.  As I sit here looking out my window gearing up for an awesome Sunday afternoon mountain bike ride the air outside is awash with leaves as they’ve collectively chosen today as the right one during which to descend to the ground en masse like so many lemmings.  It’s bittersweet that my favorite time of the year is so cruelly short and immediately followed by the interminable caliginous winter during which all that’s pure and right in the world takes on a sheen of dull and lifeless gray.  The only good that comes of it, aside from drinking more Scotch and incessantly making hot buttered rum batter, is that I get to start making fires again and for me one of life’s few beautiful certainties is that when all the world seems feckless and insensate I can always hunker down and stoke a fire in my hearth and sit and listen to the pops and hisses and revel in the engulfing warmth that blessedly, if fleetingly, recalls the glory of summers past and hints ever so sweetly at those to come.  Friday night was the first fire of the year.  There are a lot more to come.