Monday, November 30, 2015

November's Last Hours

We just got back from yet another trip to North Carolina, where I got pretty seriously lost in the Pisgah National Forest--on the trail to the original Cold Mountain--and scaled the dizzy heights of Chimney Rock.  They don't mark the trails on the Pisgah; they just expect you to know where you're going, so it's easy to lose your way.  I was prepared to build a debris hut and stay the night, but it would have scared my wife too badly.  I don't know how it is that I've been to North Carolina four times this year.  

My favorite season is drawing to a close.  Good bye, November, these gray days of the soul.  I'll anxiously await your return next year.  It's not that I hate Christmas.  It's just that I hate all the market-driven Christmas mania that begins even before Thanksgiving.  These last lingering hours of November are good, too.  We don't need the Yuletide, and we don't need the snow.  We don't need the garish decorations or the sentimental music.  All we need is these dark hours.  I could make do with a wattle-and-daub cabin in the woods, a woods very much like this.  I feel confident that I know how to build one, and the world I'm fleeing would barely miss me.

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