My birthday is in early September, and every year, it heralds the beginning of autumn. Something shifts in me when it arrives. I accept that summer is dying and fall will soon take its place. This morning, I look out the window and see the garden on its final flowers: scarlet mums, goldenrod, blushing sedum, fiery orange sunflowers, deep purple New England asters. Rudbeckia like dark-eyed suns. Everything else is fading: the echinacea sway brown and charred, the marjoram hangs scraggled and woody, and the daisy bushes begin to yellow. Soon all will be dead, and it will be winter, and I’ll be desperate for spring again.
Each year, winter is harder for me to accept. I used to love parts of winter: the slippers, the sweaters, the white puffs of our breath, the delight and surprise of snow. Now, the only things I like about winter are Christmas and wood fires in the fireplace. These days winter depresses me. I want to run away from the darkness, the bulkiness of winter clothes, the bleak landscape.
If you would have asked me this spring, “Do you think you’ll crave fall by the end of summer?” I would have said absolutely not. I want endless green and flowers and butterflies. I want light clothing and bare feet and lunches on the back deck. I want swimsuits, weekends on the water, paddling and surfing and listening to waves crash. And I want long stretches of sunlight, 14 hours at least, where there’s enough light to run at 6:30 in the morning and watch hummingbirds in the garden until almost 9pm.
And yet, at the end of every summer, I am ready for fall. Including, much to my surprise, this one. My husband gave me a jacket for my birthday that has me watching the forecast for a day when I can wear it (there is not one yet). I’m thinking about shrubs to plant in November so we’ll have something new to flower in the spring. I pulled out my jeans this week and am wearing long pajama pants today even though it’s not really that cool out. I ordered a wetsuit yesterday so we can paddleboard on crisp autumn days, and I’m eyeing the woodpile and thinking about that first fire.
It does me no good to resist what will come. Because winter will come. And if I’m honest with myself, even though I grumble more about winter every year, I am grateful for its cold darkness that makes me appreciate warmth and light.
We started our day watching the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean. We were in Cocoa Beach on the east coast of Florida, and we took one last walk on the beach before driving across the state. We ended our day on the west coast of Florida, where we watched the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico.
Sunrise: Cocoa Beach, Florida
Before sunrise, when my lens was fogged from leaving the air conditioned room. Atlantic coast of Florida.Ibis at sunrise, Atlantic coast of Florida
Sunset: Siesta Beach, Florida
Thundercloud before sunset. Gulf coast of Florida.
Every time I lift my left shoulder, I grimace. Same when I step out of the car. Or if I touch my ribs where they pressed against the surfboard when I paddled. Or the front of my right shin where the leash wrapped around and yanked on one of my spectacular falls. My toenail polish is chipped and needs to come off. The second toe on my left foot has a red blister on top of it from rubbing the board.
My body is beat up, and each ache reminds me of the fun we had taking surf lessons at Cocoa Beach earlier this week.
When we arrived on Tuesday, the lifeguard stands flew red flags. The wind blew 10-15 miles per hour from the Atlantic Ocean straight onto shore. It made a mess of the waves. It looked kind of scary out there, not really the easy baby waves I was hoping for. We weren’t sure if our lessons would be canceled. They were not.
We practiced popping up on a demo board in the parking lot: hands under your chest, fingers facing forward; push up, get your feet underneath you, shoulder width-ish apart, perpendicular to the long line of the board. We carried the surf school’s 9′ and 10′ beginner boards on our heads the two blocks to the beach. The waves were white water, and they roared so that we had to yell over them. The surf wasn’t huge, necessarily, just powerful. It looked like a washing machine on agitate.
Getting out through the crashing waves wore me out that first day, especially after I wiped out a couple dozen times, got tumbled underwater with salt water blasting up my nostrils, and then toted a giant foam board through surf that wanted to carry it and my body the opposite direction from where I wanted to go each time I needed to get out to the swells to try again. My eyes burned. In the space behind my eyes, I felt the pressure of the entire Atlantic Ocean; it stung and pounded in my sinuses from all the salt water I’d inhaled.
After an hour of “surfing,” I couldn’t see through my puffy, bloodshot eyes, and my body felt jiggly like gelatin. Any semblance of upright balance was purely accidental on that first day. I managed to get up and stay up a few times, but it was pure luck and I never felt like I had anything in hand. How many times had our instructor Calvin told me, “Eyes up!” “Don’t grab the rails or you’ll tip!” “Plant your feet!” “Bend your knees!” “More weight on your front foot!” “Your arms are windmilling!”
And still. Afterward I was filled with a sort of glee. I couldn’t wait to get back out Wednesday to go again. We checked the weather forecast over and over. Was the wind was still predicted to be slightly lower tomorrow? Yes? Awesome.
Wednesday morning I woke early and walked on the beach at sunrise. I saw surfers in the water a few blocks down from our Airbnb and I watched them pop up. They did it in one motion rather than a sequence of steps like warrior pose in yoga, which is what I was doing. I went back to our room and practiced popping up on the floor.
When we arrived for our second lesson, the wind was 5-10mph instead of 10-15, and there was still chop, but the swells more parallel, the space between them more chill, and getting out through them was easy; I slid onto my sore ribs on the board and paddled out instead of getting whacked in the face every 2 seconds. I wouldn’t have had the arm strength to paddle through the washing machine the first day — I had to trudge through on foot lifting the nose or tail over each wave and then hanging onto the board to keep it from getting ripped away from me.
I spent the first 15 minutes falling, over and over again, just like the day before. After one particular nosedive, Calvin told me “You popped up great on that, and then your eyes went straight to your feet.” On my next push, he said “Keep your eyes up” for the billionth time, and I did. No matter what was happening below me, I kept my eyes on the clouds above the horizon, and I popped up, and the board wiggled, and I adjusted my feet, and I stabilized, and I rode the wave all the way in. Before I stepped off the board, I threw my hands up and yelled “Woohoo!”
I paddled back to our instructor with a huge grin plastered across my face, and I said, “I did something on that one! That one felt right!”
“Yeaah, that was killer!”, he said. “You were surfing!”
Now I understand why surfers chase waves. It is So. Much. Fun. The rest of the hour went by too fast. After the killer wave, I managed a few more, though still with the instructor’s help. When we got the boards back to the School of Surf parking lot, we wanted to sign up for another lesson before we left town. I still have so much to learn and so much practicing to do! I didn’t choose or paddle into waves on my own. None of the instructors had any openings left before we left town, though. It was probably for the best anyway because I think our bodies might need to recover a bit. As Wednesday progressed, we each discovered new and deeper aches and pains.
As we drove away from Cocoa Beach this morning, my eyes stung with emotion rather than salt water. I didn’t like leaving.
Ron Jon looks a little different from when we stopped on my childhood vacations to Florida
The butterflies haven’t arrived in droves yet, but I’m hopeful that by the end of July they’ll be here. I walk the garden every day to turn leaves over and look for caterpillars. So far I’ve found none. I may have spotted a couple of swallowtail eggs on the rue; I’ll keep a close eye on that.
Meanwhile, the garden is in full bloom. Most of the flowers I planted serve as nectar sources for butterflies and bees; hummingbirds drink from them, too. The caterpillar host plants aren’t as pretty, so I haven’t photographed them, but I have five different kinds of milkweed for the monarchs, lots of dill, rue, and parsley for the eastern swallowtails, and a spicebush for the spicebush swallowtail. I hope they’ll all visit this summer.
Echinacea foreground, lollipop vervain background. Butterflies love the nectar of both; goldfinches sway on the echinacea.
Coreopsis foreground, yarrow and germander background
Rudbeckia (brown-eyed Susan)
Echinacea, liatris (blazing star;gayfeather), and passionflower in the background
Gaillardia (blanket flower) foreground, white veronica and yellow yarrow background
New Sombrero Adobe cone flower. These are intensely orange. I love them.
Passionflower
Shasta daisies
Common milkweed. The flowers smell like almond, and this is a host plant for the monarch caterpillar.
For our weekend getaway, my husband found a bed and breakfast with water access right on the property. We shared a bottle of wine on the dock last night, ate an amazing home cooked breakfast this morning at a long wooden table in the sunroom off the pool, I journaled from a picnic table that overlooks the creek this afternoon, and I walk through the butterfly garden every chance I get.
Butterfly garden and the main guest houseBeautiful blue pool Tabbs Creek at sunrise Dock where we drank our wine last night and our coffee this morning Echinacea in the gardenOutbuilding on the property The Inn at Tabbs Creek, Mathews County, Virginia
My husband and I drove over to the Chesapeake Bay this morning to spend three days at a little Inn where we can launch our paddle boards from their dock. I packed my belongings in a single bag, and for the first time in seven years, I did not bring my laptop with me on a trip away from home. I brought my notebook and a pen, but not my computer. I’m writing this on my phone.
We arrived to the Chesapeake long before we could check into the Inn, so we ate fish tacos at a waterfront restaurant, then launched our boards at New Point Comfort near Mathews, Virginia. We paddled to an empty beach, then across the shallows to the New Point Comfort lighthouse. The water was lumpy with swells from the breeze, but we got to ride the wind back in. We saw dolphins and terrapin turtles. I like it here.
Butterfly Mind 