The Turn

[irul&ublo]

In Truckee. A few leaves starting to yellow. Crisp with a breeze on the walk this morning. There will no doubt be a few more warm days, but Ullr stirs.

[LightRanger]

Yeah, that breeze was a fresh breath for sure. Zipped up the vest on my dog walk in Tahoe Donner this morning.

[KQ]

We had a fairly mild summer topping 100 only a handful of times which compared to last year's nightmare was a welcome surprise.

September came and BOOM! Temps dropped to the 70s and are forecast to stay there. Kinda crazy for us. Hope it isn't a harbinger of a cold winter. Noticed the cats are starting to get plush and the bird population at my feeders has suddenly dropped off dramatically. Horses shedded out their summer coats last month - again, crazy early.

[NW_SKIER]

Any reason why you guys aren't bumping the old thread?

[KQ]

Any reason why you guys aren't bumping the old thread?

Didn't know there was one but after all these years it makes sense that this subject has been broached before. Did a search for "turn", "the turn", "Season" and "Fall". Got a lot of hits but nothing that was an old thread discussing the changing of the season in general and not specific to an area but I didn't go past page 3 of any one search so if it's out there post it up if you have it!

[NW_SKIER]

Didn't know there was one but after all these years it makes sense that this subject has been broached before. Did a search for "turn", "the turn", "Season" and "Fall". Got a lot of hits but nothing that was an old thread discussing the changing of the season in general and not specific to an area but I didn't go past page 3 of any one search so if it's out there post it up if you have it!

I bumped it

[SB]

Japaknees

[KQ]

I bumped it

Oh...no wonder I couldn't find it! It's in a different forum.

[gravitylover]

Bubbles then give it another 20 seconds.

[irul&ublo]

Any reason why you guys aren't bumping the old thread?

Because we're not wedded to orthodoxy.

[LightRanger]

Doh. On my phone. Didn't notice this wasn't the old thread.

[irul&ublo]

Doh. On my phone. Didn't notice this wasn't the old thread.

Embrace the new. Don't let your mind be shackled by convention.

[KQ]

The Beautiful Sadness of Autumn: An Equinoctal Magic

In the midst of the harvest celebration, what to do with the melancholy of this season?

Fall is a sensory season, heavyladen with beauty: tables overbrimmed with squash and corn, the nightchill that welcomely pings your skin, woodsmoke in the air, cider on your tongue, the faraway horns of a highschool football game. Gosh, it’s gorgeous!, and front-loaded for celebration.

But not all my friends feel that way, or they feel something else besides: my intuitive friend Lucie gets a deep fear around this season, an acute, visceral sense of her impending demise. Other people dear to me also feel the SADness coming on, even amid the fireworks shows of leaves. Something pulls about the Fall, something tugs, something ebbs.

The feeling begins around the Equinox, around Mabon: it comes with the draining away of light, the steady and growing influx of darkness at the edges of the day. The long languid abundance of summerTIME is gone, the sense of immortality. There is a sense that things are being taken from us.

And they will be, and are. Events, relationships and memories will be left behind. We might feel like we have run out of time to correct our mistakes, to turn things around. It can’t all go with us, carried across the seasons. We make decisions about what to keep and what to feed, what is sound and whole enough to make the journey, and through doing so we choose what kind of person we want to be.

Our sorrow might stem from what seems to be that choice’s ruthlessness. For in one timeline, we cannot be all possibilities, we cannot be all different versions of ourselves at once, so we have to choose one. Sometimes the choice has already been done for us. Acknowledging mistakes and YES, failures is not a popular or comfortable position. So there is a frightened sense as the selves that do not, that will not, make it through to the next cycle, clutch on for dear life.

Maybe that is one reason my friends feel so sad. Everything feels passing, precious, poignant. In the superabundance of mid-autumn, we can see all of it: what we have done, as well as what we have failed to do.

But the failure is also part of the harvest. A teacher of mine told me once that our mistakes are compost for our successes. I make offerings to the Goddess of Failure, she says. I give her all that I did not succeed in doing: all abortive attempts, all miserable rejections, all the things I tried but I could not do, all the people I could not convince to love me. I give it all to her. I learn from my mistakes so that I can be better. I make them into compost so that I can grow my next projects, so I can avoid the same mistakes in relationships.

That is something quite different from abandonment. So instead of feeling like you have to abandon anything, turn it over with compassion into the soil.

Goddess of Failure, part of my harvest is my mistakes. I offer you what I broke, and I offer you all the lessons I learned from it.

There are no mistakes, no real failures: only compost.

And instead of only looking at what is lost, look at what is left, what you keep, the one you’re with, for that is what will sustain you. It is polished for you: cleaned out and pure and glorious and made ready for you, all yours. Place it on the altar of your heart, hard and dearly won. The compost goes beneath.

It is all your harvest. Well come to what is your own. Happy Autumn Equinox!

So mote it be, and blessed be!

[KQ]

Turn a steak not a filet

[2FUNKY]

I drop it on flesh side for a couple seconds to get grill marks then turnt to skin side to finish.

[NW_SKIER]

I drop it on flesh side for a couple seconds to get grill marks then turnt to skin side to finish.

On the grill or in the skillet, this is the path to certain victory.

[GoldMember]

hmm....I can't seem to find the original thread "The Turn" so I'll piggy-back off this one.

While we still have heavy smoke in the air and the thermometer is forecasted to hit 98 Thursday, I'm feeling some sense of The Turn. Out mountain biking yesterday, I noticed that sense of fall with a little cooler temps and daylight fading faster. This morning, outside our house was 51 which is about 10-15 degrees cooler than it's been for a while. It wasn't as light in the morning when I got up and there are some geese hanging around that I've not seen since their migration north in the spring. And I had my first skiing dream over the weekend, always a good sign. Yep, I think it's starting to turn. Bring it; I'm sick of the heat and smoke.

[iceman]

I just flew 500 miles north and it's hotter and steamier here than where I was. C'mon bitch, turn!

[GiBo]

For me it's the light angles. When you've been living on the same patch of dirt for 51 years, you know the light. I was riding the local trails last night and I saw the turn in the shadows. It's still hot AF- maybe a little crisper last couple of mornings- but it's all about the light for me.

[iceman]

I agree about the light, in fact I noticed it a couple days ago on a walk, while I was sweating my ass off.

[GoldMember]

How's the hip doing?

[iceman]

Not bad. Getting around fine. Still sore sometimes and it always hurts like a bitch to stand up from sitting and for a few steps after that but it's okay after that. Had to buy a mattress pad because it was waking me up when I sleep on that side but that helped a lot. Getting there I think, thanks.

[east or bust]

Yep, was just noticing the shorter days this past week.

[GoldMember]

Not bad. Getting around fine. Still sore sometimes and it always hurts like a bitch to stand up from sitting and for a few steps after that but it's okay after that. Had to buy a mattress pad because it was waking me up when I sleep on that side but that helped a lot. Getting there I think, thanks.

Yeah, I would think it's going to take several months for total pain-freedom. Hope you're able to get on skis without any real issues.

[iceman]

Yeah not to get too far into it but there's this whole question of vascular necrosis -like what happened to Bo Jackson. Either the bone lives or it dies and we don't know yet, so the whole hip replacement thing is kinda floating around out there to be determined later. If that doesn't happen I think I'll be okay to get on skis this year the way it's been going. If it does happen it'll probably be around December when I get chopped on so stay tuned I guess.