De-Nesting

Sunday October 1 2006

It’s that time of year where my biological clock kicks in… my biological wanderlust clock. Time to condense, time to get ready to pack up and move somewhere. About a month ahead of departure time, (as in now), I start to get restless, I pace around, I start to reduce things into smaller piles, rearrange things back into their bags, cull things that I really don’t need to be carrying around with me. Maybe it’s the fall nip in the air, or the aspens now earnestly changing bright colors, or for, oh, the past 20 or so years I’m always moving somewhere about this time of year so it’s ingrained in my system.

When you get older most people are inclined to settle down. The older I get the more I want to wander. There’s so many new places I want to discover, and so many places I want to go back to, and never enough time. Maybe I was born in the wrong time?

And as usual, I’m not even sure exactly where I’m going in a month’s time or so, when my job is over. Don’t know quite what I’ll be doing, or where I’ll be doing it, or where I’m going to leave my horse.

Sometimes I about can’t stand it – can’t sit and read or write or watch a movie, can’t do anything but go ride a horse – which is where we headed today.

We chose Big Eagle, a good hard stiff climb for the horses (we have a 50-mile endurance ride next weekend), and hopefully some good fall aspen colors for us humans to partake of.

Stormy clouds had been blanketing the area the last day or two, but produced no storms. Today the weather looked suspect again - heavy clouds and no sun - and, after we’d saddled the horses, “What do you think about those storm clouds over the Sawtooths?” “Hmmm… well… let’s try it anyway.”

We tied jackets on the backs of our saddles, and headed up into the mountains, and boy, did we time the fall colors perfectly! Sometimes the aspens start changing at the end of August and are blazing in September, but this year for whatever reason, they held onto their green leaves, with only a few infrequent groups changing here and there. Until today! I don’t think I’ve ever sent them like this. Bursting out everywhere, brilliant, dazzling yellow and orange – tunnels of bright yellow we rode through and under, bright yellow carpets of round leaves, dazzling yellow and orange blankets splashed over the mountainsides, among the dark evergreens. The layers of purple mountains and the dark blue skies – it was definitely raining up on Eagle Peak ahead – made the brilliant yellow stand out even more. Of course I didn’t have a camera since my stinkin’ little Minolta digital finally died on me recently. It rained on us (but no lightning!!!), cool fall mountain rain, but it didn’t matter because the colors were brilliant and the fragrance of the rain-sprinkled ground was intoxicating.

Which just served to make me more restless when I got home… Time to do more packing and pacing…