October 1 - Nights are growing longer now and with the passing of the equinox just a few days ago, the northern hemisphere should, if experience is any teacher, rapidly begin to cool off.

All of us, I’m sure, can say we are happy to think of a cooling down and a return to the norms of autumnal weather. But nothing is assured anymore. The weather was all akilter this year, no matter where you look. In Germany: torrential rains resulting in “once-in-a-thousand years flooding;” in Oregon and Washington states “inconceivable overheating of the atmosphere.”

And hereabouts, too, rainstorms suddenly dumping three, four, five or eight inches of rain at a time, multiple times over the summer. All of us devoutly wish that the impacts of climate change will fall years from now, beyond our lifetimes ideally—and somewhere else, too, anywhere, not just in our forest or in our rivers or oceans or in the family basement apartment in Queens, NY.

It can only be a matter of time before some truly dreadful deluge, tornado, or windstorm hits us right here in Sullivan. I just put a new roof on my home to protect everything below it from the norms of expectable weather.

What I fear most is that day the mobile goes off in a scream and we are instructed to head to the basement. That dreadful day will come here, most assuredly, and sooner than any of us want or expect. We know why this will come. We leave our children a degraded and dying planet.

Some days it seems to me that middleclass Americans are no better than the middleclass Germans of the Weimar Republic who sat on their hands watching green-black clouds gather, knowing such clouds always portend the whirlwind.

For the moment, though, normalcy reigns and if one doesn’t watch too much TV or YouTube, you can almost get by with a feeling of ‘same-old, same-old.’ We are grateful for the respite offered to us by the rhythms and customs of everyday life.

The Smallwood Civic Association (SWCA), for example, is reaching out to Association members who swim, boat, or fish on Mountain Lake. The SWCA Boat Launch over on Lakeshore Drive will be renovated starting in mid-October this year. In order to start renovations, all watercraft must be removed from the Boat Launch area by Monday, October 18th.

A doughty and energetic group of SWCA volunteers have offered to help those needing assistance remove their craft from the launch. Please sign into the SWCA website and fill out the form there if you need help.

A poignant time, the fall. Shadows and light mix and mingle at midday on the sunny floor of the forest. At this point, we could resign ourselves to melancholy and inaction at salad days gone, or summon ourselves to roll up our sleeves and hop to it for the common good.

Our actions, too, can be the weather in which we live. — As always, the choice is ours.