spirit of october

sunrise:  6:42

Surely there was something unusual in the air today.  As an alternative to the usual stick, Kate asked me to throw her a pear.

They are hard, knobbly pears off a gnarled old tree, so it actually held up for quite a while.  But at the far northeastern corner of the fields the temptation of sweet juices oozing through the bite marks finally broke down Kate's defenses.  She had a healthy pre-breakfast snack.

She switched back to sticks.  What ensued was a lengthy round of keepaway with Clara.

 Kate won big.

Crystal clear sky today - an uplifting, brilliant kind of morning that you can only get on an October day in New England.

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I want to share a couple of pictures of the rest of yesterday's poetry readings.  Even though the Cadillac Mountain portion of the day was officially canceled, I sped up the mountain road to make it there by sunset, just in case someone showed up.  Sure enough, two women were there, looking for poetry.

I had looked forward to this for so long.  There is Sutton Island, that long, skinny one in the foreground to the right.  We are looking directly at the northeast end of the island where Rachel Field's house, now mine, looks right back up at this mountain.  I read a few of her poems, and one of the attendees read some poetry from a book she had brought.

A fitting and beautiful end to a full, rich, albeit logistically convoluted day.