Return:

I have returned from a brief trip to Florida for a workshop.  Although my trip was not, for the most part, relaxing, it was reinvigorating.  Sometimes a change in routine is all that is needed, even if that change is simultaneously stimulating and exhausting.  My mind worked far too hard trying to absorb loads of information and there was far too little time for movement. I arrived home yesterday and slumped onto the sofa for a nap with two cats artfully draped over me, seeking as much contact as possible.

We did manage one early morning walk on the beach: 

After that brief nap I did manage to tend to mail and phone calls, unpack, cook, clean, walk, talk to a friend, and plan my schedule for the coming week.  At which point I was more than ready to head to my own bed and my own linen sheets.

I am certainly focused than I was before the trip, and my busy schedule over the next couple of weeks seems a little less daunting. However, although there are many things to do, the ever-present task list is not what has captured my attention this morning. Rather I am focused in what appears to be a subtle shift in the seasons. When I left it still felt mostly like summer.  Upon my return it feels more like early fall.  The trees are noticeably beginning to turn. It is not cool, exactly (I have not yet shed the residue of nearly 30 years in the northeast) but the air feels different. I took a walk yesterday evening; the evening are smelled different, a little damp after a rain, with perhaps just the smallest hint of crumbling leaves, perhaps the smallest whiff of brownness and decay, as opposed to the summer rainstorm smell of wet earth, mossy greenness and teaming growth.  It was very faint, so subtle as to be easily missed, and yet it was there.