Subtle Seasonal Shifts

As I've been driving home, I've been noticing more houses decorated for Halloween.  I remember last year, amidst hurricane wreckage, seeing a house decorated here or there and feeling like we had lost a whole season, post-Hurricane Irma.  This year we have yet to have our first cold front make its way down here, so it's disconcerting to see the Halloween decorations and to reflect how late in the year it really is.

And yet the light is shifting.  Yesterday morning, as I walked up the outside parking garage stairs at school, I realized that the sun is rising more to the south now, and the building blocks the light.  In the summer when I climb the stairs, the sun is blinding.

The shift in seasons is VERY subtle this far south.  Some years, it's the scent of a cinnamon broom in a grocery store that first alerts me.  Other years, it's the arrival of pumpkins that transforms a church yard or a scarecrow keeping watch, even though there are no crops or crows.

This week-end, I will experience a much more wrenching seasonal shift.  I am off to a retreat at Lutheridge in the mountains of North Carolina, while my spouse stays here to take care of teaching responsibilities.  I hope to return with mountain apples and other goodies.

Once, I made this trip more often, but it's been a few years since I made an October trip--so I'm really looking forward to it.  The retreat is a 50 Forward retreat--a series designed for people in their 50's as they think about midlife and what's beyond.  Each year there's a different theme--this year's theme is "Simple Enough:  Living More with Less."  At the Create in Me retreat back in April, I saw the theme and had a pastor friend tell me that I should really attend this one--and so, I am!  I'm happy for all the help I can get, as we make choices about this house and about the future.

As I move about my mostly normal life, I'm deeply aware of all of those who have been disrupted during this severe hurricane season.  I feel more than a bit of survivor's guilt--it could have been me, and I'm so glad that it hasn't been so far.  As I make coffee in the bathroom each morning, I reflect on how much my mostly normal life continues to be disrupted by last year's severe hurricane season.