Life After Peace Corps
No
doubt, summer has come to an end. In spite of the lingering heat, there
are signs signaling summer's exit. Morning, the sun acts like a sleepy
child, unenthusiastically raises its head out of the horizon. Evening, it
quickly sinks back to the edge of the sky; lets darkness claim its realm
earlier each day. The nights are different now, too. The air is
cooler, less stifling and actually quite inviting.
Lately,
I even notice that the leaves in the forest behind my bedroom window look
different. They have grown darker, older. Some begin to turn brown
and golden. Vines tinge with red, and the last lingering wild flowers
have shriveled; almost gone. Recent frequent rainstorms also intensify
summer's departure. They melt away the dense forest with incessant
downpours. Nevertheless, I do enjoy listening to the gentle tapping sound
of rain hitting leaves, watching the wild dance of autumn leaves spinning,
whirling and swinging in the wind.
When
the rain and wind subside, some leaves are trapped under fallen branches, some
are blown away to neighbors' backyards and some drift as far away as the
Four-Mile Run Stream down the hill. They decorate walkways and stream beds with irised color. Majority
of the fallen leaves, however, rest on the forest floor; disintegrate slowly
and release nutrients to the mother earth. Unmistakably, the forest is not
dying but changing, transforming, and deepening into hibernation.
Weather
authority predicts this winter will bring lots of snowfalls. I am anxious
to see how the woods look like when covering with snow. Just another
day, I walked into a family of four white-tailed deers. The fawn still has
the white spots on its back. The encounter caught us off-guard. We
both stared at each other motionless. Soon, the mother deer emerged from
bushes, she watched me even more intensely. After a while, she realized I
meant no harm to her baby, so the family went on to their grazing and ignored
my present. 
