Pining for Perichor

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Last Tuesday, fall arrived in my town: “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” according to John Keats. The temperature plummeted from 91 to 68 and most of us were relieved. It's almost Hallowe'en, after all, and pitch dark by dinnertime.

To prove my fortitude and general machismo, I went swimming one more time up at the lake, which is gorgeous now all the boats are gone and flotillas of coots have arrived. I might have just taken a photo, but my friend Betsy had her wetsuit on, and gloves, and a bathing cap, and I couldn't let her go in all by herself, could I? They don't make wetsuits in my size, so I had to rely on my personal insulation system, which worked beautifully in the end. In the beginning, the water seemed icy and I complained a lot, which always helps warm a person up. Some swearing was also heard. But really, the water's not that bad, and by the time I'd gotten in, muttering under my breath, to follow Betsy and Rocky, her dog, it was comfortable and we swam and swam.

I don't know if you remember from your childhood what it's like the day after the County Fair, when the carnies dismantle the rides and Job's Daughters cart all that used frying oil out of their booth in five-gallon buckets. Or even after a dinner party, when you're reaching under the sofa to grab a stray napkin ring and the sink is full of soapy water that's lost all its heat and most of its bubbles? Fall seems like that to me: a season of cleaning up and putting everything away. Tidy piles of firewood appear next to my neighbors' houses, and all the summer toys disappear. In a perfect world, I'd be up on a ladder cleaning out my gutters, but luckily perfection has never managed to find me, so instead I'm sitting on the dead dry grass of my so-called lawn, eating a windfall pear.

When Keats wrote “season of mists,” he was in England, where it had been raining all summer long. Here in the globally-warmed Sierra foothills of Northern California, we don't see rain between early May and late October. If something looks like mist, don't hesitate to call 911: it's likely to be the initial few minutes of a terrible forest fire. The surface of Scott's Flat Lake, which is really a reservoir, has dropped 20 feet since the day we first dove in. Some evaporated, but most if it was released downstream to farmers and our town's water treatment plant.

Even though the nights have cooled and the sun's less fierce, everything is still parched: Jeffreys, lodgepoles, manzanita, the golden California grasses, all the small animals and birds. And us big mammals, too: mountain lions, brown bears, and middle-aged former redheads, by this time of year we're longing and pining and waiting impatiently for “perichor,” that incredible smell when hot dry dirt is drenched by the first rain.