I said a few days ago that it’s felt like fall for a while.
And that’s true. But it didn’t look like
fall.
Only a few of the trees were just starting to turn. But last night a
storm blew through campus and this morning, for whatever reason, the trees had
turned. I don’t mean all of them, or that any turned completely overnight, but
a lot more trees have a lot more yellow and orange in them now. It looks like fall.
It looks like Fall inside, too. We’ve got the whole campus
pretty much decorated for the season, now—displays of pumpkins and corn stalks
in doorways, little winter squashes on the tables in the Dining Hall, vines
twine up the walls and across the ceiling of the Great Hall…we’ve worked hard
to get it all set up over the last few weeks. The place looks good.
What we haven’t had to do is rake leaves on campus. Charlie
says the best mulch for a tree is what it grows itself. All around here, where
we have trees we have ground covered in leaves and broken twigs, all year
round. The difference in the fall is the ground gets a fresh and more brightly
colored coat. We do rake leaves off campus, though. Charlie has a deal worked
with our neighbors where we come and take away their fallen leaves and compost
them and use them to mulch our garden beds and farm fields. That will probably
start next week. It’s fun—I remember last year how we hitched a cart to one of
Joy’s horses and took that cart out along the main road picking up leaf piles….
But the advancing season is making me think of other things,
too—all the people graduating. Graduation itself isn’t until February, of
course, but after the school year ends at Samhain we won’t see the graduating
students very much. I won’t even be on campus very much, though I’ll be here
more than I was last year in order to keep my commitment to sleep outside an
average of once per week. So it’s like Samhain is the beginning of the end or
something.
38 people are graduating this year, including four mastery
candidates. I’m not honestly all that concerned about most of them leaving—other
than being happy for them, of course. I’m not really friends with most of them
and some are people I hardly know. And some aren’t really going anywhere—Arthur,
for example, is earning his Green Ring at Brigid, but he’s not leaving. His
whole reason for coming here was to get involved in this community, so he’s
probably going to stay on as an ally—as long as there’s room he can live on
campus for a fee and help out.
But other people—this year’s graduating class includes Rick,
Willa, Ham, Jim, three more of the Ravens, and Ebony. And both Rick and Ebony
want to come back and get their rings, so they’ll be going into Absence. No
offense to any of my friends who are staying on, of course, but right now I’m
thinking it’s going to be pretty lonely around here next year.
In the meantime, I’ve started doing my outside thing. This
past weekend I spent Saturday night out in my spot—I would have spent Sunday
night out also, but that storm was coming in and I turned chicken. My plan is
to do two nights a week when I can, so I’ll have the leeway to skip a week when
I have to. My parents think I’m crazy, of course. Specifically, my mother is
angry that Charlie is “making” me do this. She’s grumbled some about what am I
paying room and board for if I’m not allowed to sleep inside. Which is all very
strange because my mother loves camping—she and Dad go camping for a few days
at a time at least once or twice a year and says she wishes she could afford to
do it more often. And she knows I used to love going camping with them. So why
is she complaining about Charlie “making” me do something she knows I enjoy and
that she wishes she could do herself?
But I’ve long since learned not to worry about my parents’
reactions to this place. It’s just because they love me.
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