Tonight I ran in the rain. Now I'm dry and comfy in my "loungewear," getting ready to enjoy the meal Cara and I always pictured ourselves eating in our empty nest days: crusty bread and brie with a salad. Simple and romantic with no clean-up. I guess those are really the stages of life: restaurants in your twenties, mac and cheese in your thirties when you have young kids, bread and cheese in your forties when your kids leave home (and then it's on to anything you can put in a blender when you have no teeth).

This past Sunday the Gilkster and I were sitting on the deck of the Sugar Shack when the wind picked up and a birch tree toppled to the ground right before our eyes. It almost felt as though we were intruding on nature and naturally (pun alert!) it brought to mind the old philosophical question which no doubt still makes its way around college campuses: if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it does it make a sound? Well now I know--but if you need to find out for yourself, go sleep in the woods.

Happy Labor Day. Time to be thankful if you have a job--it's rough out there. Speaking of rough, I decided to do the signature workout of the days when I was fit (a decade ago) called the Pyramid. You do one pull-up, two push-ups, three crunches, then two pull-ups, four push-ups and nine crunches, continuing this progression until you reach 10 pull-ups, 20 push-ups and 30 crunches; then you do the same thing on the downside until you're back to 1,2,3. When the workout is complete you will have done 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups and 300 crunches. Back in the days of abs and biceps I could complete the drill in 28 minutes. This morning it took me over an hour, and when I was finished I was both triumphant and nauseous. Nothing a little oatmeal won't cure...
It was interesting to hear that Jessie saw the anti-wind turbine petition on the trail. I saw the same one when Ernie and I were waiting for the ferry to take us across the Kennebec. Then at a lean-to a thru-hiker had left a diatribe about saving rural Maine vs. saving the planet. So, you see, my post was actually a stolen idea. But it is heartfelt.
Well, it has been a glorious summer--made richer by our friends and family in the Birch Wisdom universe (oops, still got that mouse in my pocket).

This morning we had our date with the cool breezes of Downeast Maine. Lovely. Yet on the heels of wistful feelings of the old days in NY with the Sunday Times and bagels and cream cheese. Would I still buy a hard copy of the finger-staining Times if we lived in NY, or just read it for free on-line like I do here? We'll never know, I guess, but my sense is that we move on even if we stay in the same place. I had a professor in grad school who called the NY Times "the white man's burden." I always got a kick out of that. He, the professor, took pride in never reading newspapers or watching the news. Smart man. Because, as we now know--and has been scientifically proven--it's just the same dung, different day.

The mossy path on which we walked when the rain stopped. Earl turned out to be the redneck hurricane lost at sea. He was supposed to drag a cold front in with him, but it's still sticky around here, probably because he got too drunk to show up for the party thrown in his honor. Well, here's to hoping the Sweet has stayed dry during her interlude in the woods prior to the real work of college. I went running today for the first time in a while (now that the balky back is better) and, man, did it feel good to work up a sweat. Cleansing is how it felt, even though I probably smelled like a locker room. Nothing that a cool breeze wouldn't cure, but, as I alluded to yesterday, stacking all of our outdoor furniture in the garage was a guarantee that the winds would not blow.

The calm before the storm. We moved the boats and took in the furniture in preparation for Earl, though something tells me his bark will be worse than his bite. Famous last words, perhaps, but since we're actually prepared, with the generator primed, extra fuel and water, etc., we've probably put him into the jinx. The brains at Colby obviously aren't too worried, since Jessie left this morning for her backpacking trip and the plan is for the group to sleep under a tarp. Hmm, even in my failure to take the storm all that seriously I still believe my Sweet will wake up in a soak.
Easy is fixing us some macaroni and broccoli (comfort food for the Italian set), so we'll be eating at just about our usual bed-time. I guess Cara and I will be living the wild party life now that we have free reign in the empty nest. But back to Judy: sad to say she's returning to Cincy on Tuesday, even though we've implored her to move to Maine. She says there's not enough to do here, but if you check out her blog, The Final Quarter, you'll see that her social calendar would wipe out a person half her age.
I'm not sure where she gets the energy, and it appears to have skipped a generation. Cara, my love, is in the bath at 8:00 and conked out by 9:00. Me, I'd hit the sack at 7:00 if they'd let me.

What's special about this trail is that it's in City Forest, which is a hidden gem literally a couple of minutes from the disgustication (made up word) known as the Bangor Mall. Talk about worlds colliding--or actually just the opposite, since I'd wager that 99% of shoppers don't even know this oasis exists. I enjoyed an early morning walk here on the day we drove Jessie to Colby (we'd spent the night before at the grand hotel known as the Country Inn, which is actually just about my favorite lodging facility as not only can you walk to the trail, but there's free waffles. I enjoyed two, one before the walk and one after). Anyway, it was clear the moment we arrived at Colby that it is the place for Jessie, and so far she is exceedingly happy.