Raining Acorns Redux

Today marks our first anniversary.

To mark the day, we are re-posting the inaugural post.

It’s raining acorns.  Last year I thought the sound was squirrels, harrying the leaves.  The sounds were scattered though, in space and time.  That should have been a clue, but I was too much a novice to connect the acorns strewn across our driveway with the noises in the woods.

Up here, the men and women I encounter keep nature in their back pockets; they carry it in their purses, rattling amongst their keys and cell phones and grocery lists.  They marvel at it, but it’s a knowing marvel, without the veneer of ecstasy week-enders require.

I used to be one—a week-ender—not up here, but it’s all the same.  The first year, I took pictures of sunsets.  Lots and lots of sunsets, and not one of them came close to what I saw.  I learned I can’t fit them in a frame:  I have to be there.  I vow, as the light begins to close in early, that I’ll get up from my desk in time to look.

When I was a child, the prairie reigned next to the subdivision where we lived.  I‘d climb a tree and sit for hours, on the look-out for pheasants in the grass.  But in the end I wanted city, so I moved to one.  The city seemed to be my natural home.

I live in the country now—by happenstance, not by design.  I’ve insisted on home delivery of the Times.  I’m straddling two places, but I wonder if I’m tipping toward the other side of the divide.

Soon our driveway will be awash in leaves.  Not oak leaves—I'm told they can cling to their branches until spring.  I’ll have to look for that, but for now, I know I’ll find maple leaves—high waves of them, cresting at the curb.

It’s raining acorns again.  I’ve stopped my weekend subscription to the Times.  Too much time behind a paper, I decided.  I have to be out there, looking.  I don’t want to miss the return of wild turkeys to our yard.

***

Postscript:    Raining Acorns, Carol-Ann, and Wide Open Spaces were participants in an online non-fiction writers workshop in the fall of 2009.  WOS asked at one point if anyone would like to “keep going” after the workshop, and that, at least in RA’s likely infirm recollection, is how it all began.

The question was what form it could take.  RA’s techie partner said, “Why not do a blog?”  To which RA (characteristically) responded, “No way I’m getting into that.”  To which (after a decent interval), RA’s techie partner said, “It’s really easy.  I’ll show you.”  And, lo, it actually was easy . . . (Though RA, known in other quarters as Susan Scheid, will confess to a singular lack of imagination in choosing, as the blog's name and her own nom de plume, the name of her first post.)

Carol-Ann soon followed, with “Leaping Lizards and Sarasota Sunsets,” as did Wide Open Spaces, with “Field of My Dreams.”  RA wishes to give thanks and praise to her writing colleagues for joining in this writing venture.  Without them, Raining Acorns (the blog) would be a far less rich and interesting place.

And last, but certainly not least, our grateful thanks to all of you, our followers and readers, for joining us on our journey.  We hope you’ll continue to stop by in the coming year, and that, on your visits, you’ll find something you enjoy.