Fall changes things around here.
The sun comes up later. It disappears earlier. And if Peggy and I want to get out and wander around somewhere, we have to pay a little more attention than we did a couple of months ago.
Driving around in the dark isn’t nearly as much fun as driving around in daylight.
The rain comes back too.
But Peggy and I have developed a fairly sophisticated meteorological system for dealing with that.
We both watch out the window.
We’ll be working at the house, each doing whatever we’re doing, and one of us will notice that the sky has changed.
There’s a break in the weather.
“Let’s go.”
That’s pretty much the entire planning process.
We don’t have a meeting about it. We don’t pull up three weather apps to see whether the opening is expected to last 47 minutes or 53.
We get up. Get dressed. Grab the raincoats.
And go.
Sometimes we walk. Sometimes we drive. Sometimes we don’t have much of a destination at all.
But there’s one place we especially love this time of year.
Cape Disappointment has an overlook reached by about a half-mile walk through the trees.
At the end is a platform sitting high above the ocean, maybe a thousand feet, with these enormous views stretching up the peninsula.
It’s spectacular on a beautiful day.
But here’s the funny thing.
I think the walk out there can be even better when it’s raining.
The trail runs under this thick canopy of trees. The rain hits the canopy and seems to collect up there before working its way down. So instead of walking through a pounding rainstorm, you’re underneath this huge wet roof with water dripping through the branches.
Everything smells different.
Everything sounds different.
You walk through that forest with the rain above you, and eventually the trees open up and there’s the Pacific.
If we’d waited for a nice day, we’d have missed that version of it.
Fall gives us something else too.
Leaves.
When Peggy and I are coming home together from Astoria to Ilwaco this time of year, we’ll sometimes deliberately take the long way.
Not because it’s faster.
It’s the long way. That’s sort of the defining characteristic.
We take it because the trees are changing.
Reds. Yellows. Colors that seem almost ridiculously bright against everything else around here.
We could take the more direct route home.
Instead, we add time to the trip just to look at trees.
I’m okay with that.
I suppose it would be easy to look at fall as the season when things start disappearing.
Less daylight. Less warmth. Fewer easy opportunities to walk out the door without thinking about what you’re wearing.
Winter isn’t far behind.
But I’m not sure that’s the whole story.
Some things disappear and other things show up.
That rainy walk through the trees doesn’t exist in July.
Neither does that drive home through the fall colors.
And maybe that’s why Peggy and I have gotten pretty good at watching out the window.
We’re not waiting for everything to be perfect.
We’re looking for the opening.
I think we do this with more than weather.
How many things do we put off because the conditions aren’t quite right?
I’ll do it when work settles down.
When I feel better.
When I have more energy.
When the weather improves.
When somebody else wants to go.
When life gets a little less complicated.
Sometimes waiting makes perfect sense.
And sometimes the opening is sitting right there in front of us while we’re explaining why this isn’t the ideal time.
Peggy and I aren’t particularly profound about any of this.
One of us looks outside.
“Let’s go.”
The other one gets up.
Maybe that’s why it works.
So that’s my suggestion for you this week.
Don’t make a plan.
Just keep an eye out for an opening.
Maybe it’s literally a break in the weather. Maybe it’s twenty free minutes you didn’t expect. Maybe somebody you love says, “Want to go?”
If it appears, grab your raincoat.
Let’s go.
And if you do, come back and tell Peggy and me where you went.