Window with a View

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.  

 This little piece of land behind my bedroom window is really not much of a forest.  But for a city girl like me, it is an untamed place, wild, natural and full of wonders.  The best part is, I don’t even need to travel far, just glance outside of my bedroom window.   It is literally a window with a fantastic view.