Och, today is the start of autumn, my colleagues sighed, like that's a bad thing.
Bring it on! Of all the things I love about living in Northern Ireland, the climate is right at the top of the list. People spit out their tea when I say that, but I am sincere. The other day I walked out of the office and it was cool and breezy -- probably about 60 degrees F. Thank you, God.
Few share this sentiment.
Today's Guardian read, "It has been a spectacularly soggy summer. Northern Ireland has experienced the wettest August since records began in 1914, and overall this summer the UK has been doused with a total of 317mm (12.5 inches) of rain on average -- 154% more than usual." Sorry, fellow countrymen, but I was back in the States during the worst of it, savouring the humidity-free 70-something temps, an answer to my prayers.
The hardest part of watching summer wane is a return to normal lengths of daylight. We are now on the slippery slope to <8 hours of sunlight per day, and my first full winter here is going to be a trial, I can tell already.
But I cannot deny that I love this Marquette weather -- when the sun shines, and even when it doesn't. Back during my trip to Scotland, we were walking in the chill of the evening and I felt really, truly alive, like I could have walked for miles.
So one night last week I did, walked until the iPod ran out of juice. It had been serving up great song after great song -- it was practically psychic in finding random songs that suited my mood. I really did not want to go home, and when at last I did, I just wanted to write and/or listen to really maudlin music well into the night (although I had to turn off that one Wilco song -- kind of put me on the verge there).
I have been writing more than usual, but just for me -- and for the person in the Edinburgh airport who picked up my lost notebook. Argh.
I've been thinking about Marquette, where I used to vacation for a week at this point every year. I packed my little car with books and videocassettes and cassettes and holed up on the shore of Lake Superior to make sense of it all.
Man, I loved my holidays there. I usually came to one great truth during my time away, and often it was a slight variation on the great truth I had realised the previous year, because I'm not that deep a person. But I felt very peaceful and secure and just enamored of everything about that place.
Then, in 2000, with the millennial hype and my own evolution, I felt it was time for a significant change: I needed to see more of the world. I declined to go to Marquette in September 2001, which turned out to be a wise move for so many reasons.
I didn't know it at the time, but choosing to leave that comfortable holiday behind was a psychological sea change that eventually led to Paris, and Brussels -- but in a more life-altering way, Nashville and Charleston and, well, here in Belfast.
You can pencil in your own metaphor, gentle reader. Walking off the shores of Lake Superior led me to the banks of the River Lagan this week, strolling into the dusk and saying, thank you, thank you, thank you, and hoping that everything in the Upper Peninsula is just as I remember it.
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