It was another gorgeous day in Highlands for my Saturday morning long run, clear skies and a light breeze. At 42 degrees, I don't think it was the coldest day we have had this fall, but it had been cold enough during the night to leave frost on the windshields of cars parked outside of Townsite Apartments when I did my warm-up run - our first frost this year.
I was glad when I returned to Founders Park to find Karen and three young people chatting together, waiting for my return. The visitors were two young ladies from Atlanta and a young man from Columbia, SC; one of them had run with us before and had remembered when we met on Saturday mornings. "Here's our President-for-Life!" Karen said. I laughed and explained that we had formally dissolved our running club on June 1, but we still met and ran informally. "So I'm the Ex-President-for-Life of the Dissolved Club," I said. I stayed behind to run with the young man from Columbia, who seemed to be struggling with the altitude - "No runner left behind!" - and then caught up with Karen later, who ended up completing five miles, more than she has done so far this year. "Days like this just make you feel like running farther, don't they?" I said. I completed eight miles myself, then came home for lunch.
Martha arrived five minutes after I did, backing into the driveway, so I knew she had something to unload. I never know what my thrifty, sharp-eyed wife might discover at Mountain Findings, our local thrift store, or one of the many yard sales popular this time of year. I went out to help her and discovered it was a beautiful Japanese black lacquer cabinet and a companion mirror. We already have several pieces like this in our home that we have collected over the years, including a beautiful desk and a large bureau that Martha uses. This cabinet so closely matches the bureau that we think it may have been part of the same set. Such beautiful details!
We found a place for it right away, just above the spiral stairs to the basement, a space that we had recently cleared and that seemed to be calling out for something beautiful to fill it.
The 19th century designer William Morris once famously said, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” We're not sure exactly what this cabinet will be used for, but it unquestionably satisfies the latter requirement.
"Guess how much I paid for it?" Martha asked. I have learned not to question my wife's judgement in such matters and had not even asked. I was thinking $100? $500? More? "How much?" She grinned. "$25, for both of them." I was incredulous. She had found the two at an estate sale in Town this morning, and said that the woman running the sale, seeing Martha was interested, had told her "You can have both of those for $25." No further negotiations had been necessary.
After lunch, I raked leaves again, for the third time this week. We have a very large tulip poplar tree in our front yard that produces a massive crop of leaves, more and more each year, and it usually takes three or four rakings to get them all up. It was so dry and clear that the leaves seemed weightless. But unfortunately, I was not the only one in our neighborhood doing this kind of work today. Unlike on Wednesday, when I had enjoyed no other sounds than "a few afternoon birds singing high above and my rake gently scratching the pavement," the roar of a leaf-blower was at work, and then a big plume of smoke ascending into the air. So it goes.
In addition, I could hear the loud sounds of rifles being fired in the distance. Bear hunting season began on October 12, and this was a perfect day, I suppose, for releasing your hound dogs with their GPS dog tracking collars, waiting until you heard them treeing a hapless bear, and then tracking it down and shooting it. Each to his own. I realize that the names of two mountains in Town (one of which I climb regularly) - Big Bearpen Mountain and Little Bearpen Mountain - originated from historical fact. But I prefer seeing these beautiful creatures out on the road from time to time, at a safe distance.
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