Autumn Observations

What a year for acorns! The squirrels must be happy. Both the acorns and the leaves have been falling like rain, though the rain hasn’t been falling as of this writing. It’s easy to slip on all those acorns hiding under the fallen leaves. One hopes this doesn’t happen while walking the dog at a busy corner with traffic bearing down.

Which brings me (again) to the problem of speeding drivers. When returning from a walk on the beach in Westport on Sat. Oct. 19, we were abruptly halted on I-I95 going west shortly before the Swansea Mall exit. This turned out to be due to a particularly gruesome accident involving three motorcycles that apparently collided with each other.

We were less than half a mile away from this disaster and when we finally got to the highway exit, we saw three motorcycles completely mangled and broken up lying on both sides of the highway. Their riders had already been taken away. So glad we didn’t have to see that. There were three ambulances summoned, in addition to the police and fire responders. The outcome must have been grim, and traffic was backed up almost to the Braga Bridge for quite a while.

Why do some drivers/riders feel they are immortal? Reckless drivers are seldom wreck-less. Why would you gamble your life away just for a few thrills speeding down the highway? I have seen motorcyclists weaving in and out of fast-moving traffic at high speed every time we’ve been on the highway lately. If they don’t even value their own life, I don’t know what it would take to make them stop this crazy behavior.

Other thoughts this fall: I was relieved that Hurricane Leslie avoided land entirely and went up through the North Atlantic, as did Hurricane Kirk before it. Neither of those storms made the news, except for weather news, but they must have caused havoc with transatlantic shipping.

How weird it must feel to have a vicious storm bearing your name, especially if it’s an uncommon name like Helene or Milton. What awful back-to-back tragedies for so many people with the hurricanes this fall. And there is something seriously amiss when hurricanes bring such severe rain/flooding to upland areas hundreds of miles from the coast, such as North Carolina recently and Vermont last year. This will not be the last of these weather disasters either.

Closer to home, they’re still working on installing the solar field at the former Camp Buxton off Pond Street. I think that I shall never see a solar panel lovely as a tree, to paraphrase here. The worst of it was seeing this and having to hear the wretched noise of bulldozers and chain saws turning a forest into an ugly scene of destruction all summer long. That part is mostly over and the panels are being set up. As I’ve said before, I don’t mind the solar panels per se and appreciate the need for solar energy, but it would be a lot easier to take if the installation had been in an empty field and not at the expense of many acres of woods being destroyed.

The only good thing is now we get a better view of the sky from the north, which theoretically should allow for better star-gazing. But I’m no good at seeing what’s in the night sky unless it’s a big bold harvest moon. I can never make out anything like meteor showers or comets, nor have I seen the northern lights, though I’ve enjoyed the photos of those who have seen them. They say we’ll get other chances for viewing them too. When the most recent comet apparently appeared, I just said “I’ll catch it next time”. Note that next time is 80,000 years from now. Oh well.

November brings the end of my beloved Daylight Savings Time. No need for me to rant about this since I’ve done so before. There’s nothing to be done but to try and adjust to it and look forward to March. This time of year, I always like to quote a poem by English poet Thomas Hood, which includes these lines:

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member —
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! —
November!