Fair and fall

First licks at the chopping block.

The signs have been gathering, if subtly.  The nights are a little longer and cooler, but so far without that first sharp crispness in the air. Still it turns thoughts in the direction of the woodpile decimated in response to last winter's cold.

Two days ago a chickadee flitted about the garden, probably wondering why all that green was still there and where those feeders are. Yesterday one landed on the head of the scare-owl looking over the food situation.  Then today a nuthatch used the same perch to check things out.

A small flock of sandhill cranes today pecked around in the pasture just on the shoulder of the town.

So far there's no new snow on the mountain, but there has been hard frost north of here, so it is creeping southward.  The bloom has reached the top of the fireweed and so the time is ripe.

After one of the warmest summers on record, the past few weeks have been cool and rainy and last night the temperature dipped into the 30s, the first that’s been noticed this year.

Firewood delivered Friday, first splitting yesterday and another couple hours today, with a long way to go.  The sore muscles from the activity feel good. There is something invigorating about the onset of autumn and the solid smack of a maul against a thick round of sold birch wood.

I hadn't planned to go to the state fair this year.  Then the sun broke through today and with rain in the forecast, if I were to change my mind, today was the day to go.  Of course no experienced Alaskan would try the state fair on a sunny Sunday and I knew it would be crowded going in, but I have never seen this many cars in the parking lots before.  The fair today must have been as populated as some places in Alaska that call themselves cities.

It was pretty much of the same thing from previous years with one big change, at least for me.  I usually run across at least a dozen people I know wandering around there, but today not one. Honestly, almost 40 years in Alaska and in the biggest crowd I've ever seen at the fair, I didn’t see one familiar face. Of course that could have been the smarter Alaskans predicting and avoiding the huge crowd on a sunny Sunday.

Wait, I take that back.  I did see one familiar face.  It was the sullen expression of a teenaged boy whose father was dragging him through the livestock exhibits, an expression that said "I am not going to enjoy this no matter what is in here."  It was the same expression my son had when I did the same thing, dragged him to see sheep and goats and cows when less than a hundred yards away there were carnival rides and games and teenaged girls. I laughed right out loud this kid looked so much like my own son just a few short years ago.

If that boy had only known how lucky he was. Not too many years ago there were twice as many livestock exhibits as there were this day.  Year by year the numbers have dwindled, which to my mind is a shame.  I hope it doesn't signal further decline of the American family farm, but it sure seems like it.

I enjoyed my usual cheesecake ice cream cone and pork chop on a stick, looked over the exhibits and then after about three hours headed home, past some more sandhill cranes, through all the traffic, back toward the snowless mountain that only too soon will don its winter white at the peak and then the shroud will slowly creep down its sides to cleanse the world with snow once more.

Meanwhile the pile of firewood continues to beckon along with the remainder of the pork chop I didn't quite finish at the fair.

A way to go yet.

Firewood and revery