Anchor Struck

Autumn can trigger a melange of emotions in me.  My best guess is because it symbolizes

the transition from fertility to fallowness, underscoring my own mortality as each of my

days dim and fade into the increasingly longer night.

Then again, I’m not a trained professional, and I had a helluva fine weekend.

It started early Friday afternoon.  I was working on the greenhouse, rueing the reality that

my beloved San Francisco Giants were one loss away from being eliminated from the play-

offs by the Cardinals.

Even when you’re stark in the middle of nature, you can block it out with earthly concerns.

Slinkee started barking for no apparent reason.  I paid no attention at first.  She’s been known

to bark at our vehicles when they’re parked where they’re usually not.

She kept barking but didn’t move, like she would if she were after an adversary real or imagined.

So I looked up and saw this:

The camera didn’t pick up the second arc.  That’s what I get from buying the cheapest Kodak

at Staples.

Through the complex lack of rational thought that any sincere sports fan harbours, I was

immediately and immensely heartened by this obvious sign that the Giants would pull

back from the brink of the Abyss.  Sure ’nuff, they did, winning 5 – 0 as Barry Zito finally

earned his salary with six innings of shutout ball.

Saturday Jude and I visited our friends Ruth and George.  Ruth suggested we have a

Canadian moment and check out the chum migration in the nearby creeks.  Chum are

the Yugo of the salmon family.  They have little commercial value.

Somehow, though, their unpopularity doesn’t stop them from spawning.  They come

in from the ocean and head for our lakes as soon as the fall rains return and swell the

streams.

We’ve just had our heavy precipitation back a week now.  The creeks we visited were still

quite shallow.  In some spots the chum — most of whom were at least a foot long — had to

turn on their sides to continue upstream.

I wish I had brought my cheap Kodak camera, but I doubt if the fish would have photo-

graphed well.  It was an overcast day.  The chum had changed from their ocean colour of

silvery blue-green to blotchy purple.  I’m not sure how that’s supposed to attract females.

Plus, spawning males usually grow a long snout with big teeth, giving them a Mortimer

Snerd look.  Despite all that, they carry on.  The creeks were teeming with thrashing

couples.

Sunday we were finally able to burn the huge brush pile we’d been building through the

dry months.  Our friend Lee, who had come by to install a new alternator in our F-150,

started it for us.  It took six hours of tending.  What started as this . . .

. . . ended as this:

I knocked off at 5 p.m. to watch the Giants stave off elimination yet again with a 6 – 1 win.

Jude prepped the blueberry grove for winter until dark, then fixed us some fantastic

burgers and caught the end of the game with me.

Tonight the Giants and Cards go at it one last time to see who plays Detroit in the World

Series.  I’m heading outside until then to weed in the grove and search for more good

omens.