Just a week after the end of the summer tourist season we are seeing a light rain. I awoke to the sound of it in the middle of the night, when I heard delicate drops fall onto the skylight. Yesterday the morning was full of light at an early hour, when just the night before a chilly, fog-driven wind blew up the forest glen. My sister-in-law from Oregon visited yesterday and the evening before. We sat out in the late evening around our little camp fire, built from lumber scraps left over from our months-long building project.

Yesterday the sky looked yellowish, the way the seasonal change in autumn can cause the light to look different. We have another wild fire a little less than a hundred miles to the north of us, however--not the big Yosemite fire that continues to rage--and I suspect some of the smoke from that fire on Mount Diablo has gotten mixed up with our normally blue sky to cause all this quick color change. The yellow, though looking natural for an October sky--came over us too quickly to feel like it was part of what normally occurs this time of year. Sky-color change comes more gradually over a period of ten weeks or so.

I heard someone say yesterday that maybe this year we will be cheated out of our Indian summer. I would take that to mean a cooler autumn coming quicker than normal. Observing the change in only a week of weather does not convince me that our early autumn days of great warmth will not still be with us. Small cycles spin inside larger ones.

The Atlantic hurricane season is not acting normal this year. There have been no substantial tropical storms coming into the Gulf of Mexico, and it is getting rather late in the year for my Texan friends to not have to fuss about destructive wind and rain.

Now in a summer of relatively mild weather, the news folks have us turn our attention toward the on-going Fukushima disaster and the persistent plume of radioactive water that floats this way from Japan. Some reports seem written as if to give us a good scare, while others seem intent on keeping us calm and unconcerned.

The press seems best at keeping us always confused, which is why I give it only half an ear. This past week, we were presented with stories and images of a young Disney star dancing semi-naked, while from the other side of the world we see images of children being clouded in poisonous gases, while rulers of the squabbling nations discuss another round of Tomahawk war. If I allow the media too much free reign over my thoughts and emotions, I wind up understanding so little about my own self. I get a more real perspective on life if I just go outdoors and study the effects of the seasonal changes.