September, Seen Differently - Fuji Journal 2!

Brain Rain | 10.30.26

If you split a month into thirds, it’s remarkable how different each can be from the others.

One third hot, the other rainy and cold. One third dark, the other light, one happy, two sad, two joyful, one of ache. You never know. We wake, we wait, we see. That’s all we can do.

We find art where we can. We make it where we cannot.

Here is the the second third of a wonderful month we called September.

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Cooler nights means Sarah’s favorite clothes come to the front of the closet from the rear. Denim jackets, rad camo pants, Blundstones, hooded sweatshirts. I love her in the baggy, Autumnal clothes more than all others, I Love how much they suit the feeling of her. Her soul is an Autumn soul, and mine is too.

The walks change as we tip later and later into this, my favorite season. They happen earlier, they carry a chill, they smell of first woodstoves crackling back to life. They carry rain scent miles from across the valley. To me, to here, to this little hermit hideaway on the side of a mountain.

So too do the skies change, lower angle on the light, deeper hues to the clouds that blanket us. We are covered like soup that simmers, the whole sky the lid to our bubbling pot. We look up, we find light where we can, we chase it, we capture it. I share it with you. Whatever that is.

More sunsets than we knew what to do with, then, like clockwork, September shifted again and brought a heat wave out of nowhere once more. Picked up my pants that our dear friend Katelyn from the Sewing Bee patched up for me, and she went as far as to add a little pink detail that she knew I’d love the most. A perfect heart with an S in it, rather than just fixing the hole. She knows me, she really really knows me.

During this strange burst of heat, Sarah and I also decided to do what all newly empty-nested (birdhouse!) people do, and we completely renovated and changed an entire room of the house. We expanded Sarah’s Riff Raff bakery and in the process had to remove all the old flooring, and then put New flooring on top. We opted for waterproof vinyl planks that were a combo of affordable, and hard-wearing, so they should be good. Also, fair warning: If you’re over 40, buy knee pads. We didn’t have them and I swear mine are still broken from this oversight and clambering around for 4 days on my knees on concrete floors. Oof.

Stopped briefly at Sarah’s Dad’s landscaping nursery, Gardenwerks, company appreciation softball game. Sarah even got an at-bat, but popped it straight up and out. Still though, she’s got a swing on her.

Wrapped up the last third of this beautiful month watching the light change even more, watching the chill roll back in and the fleeces come back on and the eerie Halloween glow start to find its way to all the windows in our neighborhood. I am immediately thrown back to being a kid, waiting so impatiently for all the goodness that October would always bring. The trick or treating, the smell of rotting pumpkins on porches that somehow smell amazing. The smoke, the shine.

More to come, one more third of this first BER month, and I hope you still love these.

If you do, Please, Please, click the button below, help me keep this place alive.

I love you all.

Be good.