November - from the 'Year at Robie Creek' series
Originally published in the: Hello again! How are things in your neck of the woods? All remains well here in Robie Creek. Most of the leaves have fallen now, making a bright-yellow-and-brown carpet beneath white-barked alders, green-and-brown firs and pines, and bright-red first-year redosier dogwood branches. Spotty bits of ‘quilt batting’ snow that have gathered here and there will soon be part of a thick white duvet keeping the earth snug as the proverbial bug in its apparently very cozy rug (an apropos simile, given the level of insect activity that never stops beneath it). It’s been an interesting summer. Dude’s job has taken him from active wildfires to roads redirected by rivers and landslides through breathtaking mountain vistas to blown-out mining tailings ponds. I’ve been interested to learn along the way, among other things, that processes using solar energy and chlorine can go a long way toward restoring areas contaminated by those ponds. Of course the use of chl...