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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, NOV. 3, 2017 • 1C
Vine maple in
the autumn light
A writer battens down the hatches before winter
By ED HUNT
For The Daily Astorian
F
all is a gamble in this corner of the
Pacifi c Northwest.
You can fi nd yourself as a punch-
ing bag for Pacifi c storms, one after another
battering your ambitions with rain and
wind, high water and downed trees.
Or you can have the best weather of the
entire year: crystal blue skies and t-shirt
temperatures among the yellowing golden
alder and maple trees. Postcard days.
We don’t enjoy the New England col-
ors here, but I’ll take our sharp red of vine
maple in the autumn light. Watercolor sun-
sets spiced with the smell of woodsmoke as
a hundred cozy fi res come alight to fi ght the
chill of the night.
You can’t take anything for granted.
You can only aspire to take it all in.
Such bright autumn days are bless-
ings to be sure, appreciated so much more
after an “atmospheric river” pounds us for
a weekend, reminding us what lies ahead
once winter truly comes ashore.
It seems a crime on these days to be
inside. “Productive” is the word in my
house. Getting things done that need to be
done, battening down the hatches for win-
ter, getting hay in the barn, deck furniture
tied down or stored away.
To-do lists are longer on sunny fall days.
Through all of it, my wife, Amy, and I
will stop at moments and look at each other
and the cloudless blue above our heads and
soak in the sunlight.
I have learned over the years to carve
out time in my so-called “productivity” to
appreciate the clear fall days. There is a feel-
ing of guilt, to be sure, when I choose a lazy
motorcycle ride through cascading yellow
leaves rather than outdoor chores that need
to be done. Yet a crisp autumn memory will
keep you almost as warm on a dark Decem-
ber day as dry fi rewood. Almost.
Before the darkness comes
We are not fools, mind you — more ant
than grasshopper after all these years.
We start early now, getting wood pellets
and fi rewood in, fi lling the barn with hay,
shoring up fences and putting things away.
We make hay while the sun shines —
not just a maxim but a way of life in these
parts — we make fi rewood, repair gutters,
repair the outdoor lights before the dark-
ness comes.
Often something will derail our day,
our schedule wiped out by an unforeseen
event. Equipment breaks down. Animals
fi nd a way to get sick or get into where
they shouldn’t be. We need to run to town
to get this fi xed, or to pick up another one
Ed Hunt photos
TOP: Vine maple trees along Grays River ABOVE: The old Burkhalter Dairy Barn in
Grays River, with the Rosburg Bridge in the background BELOW: A kayak at sunset
of those.
So it goes.
“A pretty day for a drive at least,” we
say, and roll the windows down to enjoy the
fresh air along the way.
While running errands in Astoria the
other day, I met a man who said he’d just
moved up from L.A. I smiled and gave the
advice I usually dispense to newcomers.
I told him that after 25 years I’ve
learned it can rain 100 days in a row here
and be somehow different every day. Our
coastal clime provides dynamic weather,
ever-changing even when locked in shades
of gray. There will be plenty enough days
when you are soaked to the bone the min-
ute you step outside. There are days when
you’d rather just sit by the fi re and watch
the sheets of rain march across the horizon
and cherish shafts of silver light when it
slices through the clouds.
It rains from November to the end of
June, but we get a few blue-sky days here
and there — maybe a whole week strung
together in February.
Through the rain, you’ll learn to appre-
ciate those sunny days all the more.
The gift of sunny autumn days
The fi rst storm of the fall brought inches
of rain and a taste of what winter has in
store. The freshet brought high water to the
fi elds in front of our house, and we scram-
bled to move things away should it go
much higher. Motorcycles went into the
basement, tack up in the barn loft.
When the storm moved on, we saw the
return of brilliant blue, but the water took a
while to drain away out of the fi elds. Amy
and the girls tried to paddle out on kayaks
in the fi eld and found little current. When
I got off work the next day we went out
on the water as dusk approached. In still-
ness, we glided along the mirrored sunset.
We wondered why we had never thought
of this before.
Along the way, however, we feel the
light of the sun that we know won’t be
around forever — something that is easy to
forget during August. We watch the maple
seeds spin around us as we travel down the
road. We watch the western sky for dark
clouds and smile when we see only blue.
We spot the bright yellow turning amid the
evergreen, splashed red with vine maple in
the autumn light.
Each sunny day in autumn is a gift — a
jewel found on a beach of stones.
Ed Hunt is a registered nurse and for-
mer newspaper and magazine writer. He
lives in Grays River, Washington. His book
“The Huckleberry Hajj” is now available
on Amazon. He blogs at theebbtide.blog-
spot.com and RedTriage.com.