autumn wind

The wind is howling outside my window and an inky blackness has settled already at 7:30. A chill has settled into the bones of this place and the autumn is now completely manifest.

Two days ago I helped a friend’s family put up food from their garden for the winter. We processed pounds of cucumbers and piles of green tomatoes into pickles and chutney. By the end, a few dozen glass jars covered the kitchen counter, a testament to our hours of chopping and cooking.

As the rain fell outside, Mik and I diced tomatoes, onions, and garlic while Diana marveled over the bounty the earth provided. The caustic scent of pickle brine permeated the house for more than five hours as we tackled the relentless piles of produce, Mik with an ulu and I with a chef knife. With four sets of hands attending to the several tasks of chopping, brining, and dehydrating apples, the canning went faster than we expected and we had time to sit and share stories. Mik and David compared their lives in Alaska. I chimed in with highlights from my recent trip there. Climate change and its effect on the glaciers, fishing, and landscape was a major topic and with their combined years there, we pieced together a picture of drastic change. The glaciers that they recalled couldn’t even be seen from the centers built for that purpose anymore. Salmon numbers and fishing limits have dropped. But the stories weren’t all bleak—there were plenty of anecdotes about Alaskan winters, the bus drivers that braved the snow, and cheap fun to be had in the dark days. Diana and I chatted about cheese making, an interest I want to pursue as soon as I have a spare minute and a pastime she enjoys as a way to provide wholesome food for her family. We all told tales of the places we’d each called home. Diana and David recalled Texas, Mik told of her family in Minnesota, and I drew comparisons between Lopez and the Farm in Massachusetts. The reminiscences over my childhood on my family’s dairy farm and the woods around my house in Pennsylvania impressed the back-to-the-landers.

David, Mik, and I lingered in the orchard after gathering our payment of potatoes and apples from the season’s harvest. The sun was peeking out on the horizon as it set below the thinning clouds. The slanted autumn light warmed us despite the persistent wind, and soon I was returning home to hot roasted vegetable borscht. The wind wailed like furies on the ride as my housemates reported on their day’s adventures over dinner in our warm little burrow.