August 25: "Today," Mr. Tumnus, Slightly Surreal

It was a good day.

However, I did spend a good deal of time working on syllabi and lesson plans and virtual teaching material.  Not fun, but necessary.  Thank goodness, I'd done a lot of the groundwork last week.  It was simply a lot of cutting and pasting and emailing.  

By midafternoon, I felt slightly brain dead, so I decided to take my puppy for a long walk to clear my mind a little.  It was a hot day (mid 80s), and there wasn't a whole lot of shade.  We took the Iron Ore Heritage Trail from my hometown to the neighboring town.  That's a little over three miles.  It's a beautiful hiking/biking path through woods and near caving grounds.  

I've always found this trail slightly surreal.  As you travel down it, you encounter things like uprooted trees and squares of cement that look like abandoned chimneys.  There are benches along the way, in case your feet get a little tired.  But the strangest thing on the Heritage Trail are lampposts.  Not powerline poles topped with lights.  Honest-to-God lampposts that look like they could have been transplanted from Narnia.  I can actually imagine the faun Mr. Tumnus standing beneath one of them.  Or maybe Harvey the rabbit.

Billy Collins has a good day, too . . . 

Today

by: Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

It is a little past 9 p.m. as I type this now.  I know that autumn is fast approaching because night has already arrived.  My wife and son are getting ready for bed.  I can feel the shift of seasons in the house--from summer vacation to schoolyear.  I should be used to this change.  I've been doing it for almost 30 years, but I still find this letting go of sun and warmth very difficult.

Even along the trail this afternoon, I noticed leaves changing colors, green surrendering to gold and orange.  The long-legged shadows of August are stretching toward September.  Everyone is soaking up this last gasp of heat before the furnaces start kicking in.

As Saint Marty said, though, it was a good day.