The end of summer has its rewards
Six weeks till they move us at work from our present Cold-War-retread building in Concord, MA to a shiny new techno-cathedral on Rte. 128 in Waltham. For those of you familiar with that area, we’re going to be off the Winter Street exit – smack-dab in the midst of some of the most daunting, most legendary rush hour snarls to be found in all New England. Nice, right?
Well, if nothing else, once we’re ensconced there after the weekend of October 22, we’ll have bragging rights to being those sorts of dedicated corporate bad-asses whose commitment to The Cause far outweighs our need for quiet time and individual expression, and who keep the wheels of commerce spinning right along.
Six weeks till we move. That makes 30 business days till we’ll be in our current offices… just 30 days that I will actually have an office. For the first time in about 20 years, since I started at my current employer, I have actually had an office. It’s a very nice office, too, with a window overlooking the patio where a core group of social butterflies hangs out on Friday afternoons, cold beers and sodas in hand, their voices growing steadily louder, the farther from 4 p.m. we get. On good weeks, I can get out of the office in a timely manner, before they get rowdy. If I’m stuck past 5, at least they’re entertaining.
I have to say I’m going to miss having my own office. It has certainly been an interesting year, having four walls around me and a door, and interior space to call my own. It’s been like a little den to me, a cell of sorts, that I’ve decorated with my art and somewhat impressive collection of technical manuals and business reading. I’ve gone for a “casual but all business” kind of feel, trying to have a little individuality infused in the place. Granted, the room is narrow, and the side chair they gave me has feet that cling to the carpet, so every time someone tries to “pull up a chair”, they end up wrestling with it and can rarely get it positioned properly the first time. And the way the building is positioned, I either have way too much sun and way too much brightness and way too much heat, or it’s dark and shadowy and chilly. Not much in-between. The little lamp I have beside me helps more than you’d think. There’s an incandescent warmth it gives off, which is much more alive and far less austere than those “advanced” fluorescent bulbs that require a haz mat team to clean up your space, if you break one.
The space we will be moving to is nothing like this little office of mine. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say, and I worry that someone might read this and think that I’m being a disgruntled employee posting to the world about my beef with What Is What It Is. So, I’ll just say this — the walls will be gone, as will the direct sunlight, very likely. The individual space will be replaced by a more “collaborative” environment. And supposedly this space is designed with optimum human performance involved, engineered with efficiency and productivity as the top priority.
This should be interesting…
But I didn’t actually start this post with the intention of writing about moving (the title notwithstanding). I originally intended to write about the walk I took this afternoon up Green Road — my short pilgrimage to the beaver dam, which is just over the hill (and on the other side of several properties) from my place.
I had nice nap this afternoon. Good thing – it’s going to take me weeks to regain some sleep equilibrium after the past couple of months of pushing forward with Launch. I don’t mind the pushing. I enjoy it, actually. But man, does it do a body bad, to be that whacked about sleep. I haven’t been on a regular schedule, probably, since mid-June. So it’s going to take some time to get back to where I’m comfortable — and I can actually fall asleep without tricking myself into thinking there are no more deadlines to meet. So, on the weekends, I’ve been doing without caffeine after 2 p.m., and lo and behold, I fall asleep pretty easily. I pull the light-blocking curtains to, slip in the earplugs, crack my back with a few good side-to-side twists, and then settle in for some shut-eye. I don’t have any electronics in the room with me when I nap — too tempting to check FB one last time. I just settle in and let Saturday afternoon be Saturday afternoon. And sleep.
I woke up about four hours after I lay down, feeling like I’d been trampled by buffalo. Or swamped by Hurricane Lee. Not wanting to marinate in my own stupor, I thought I’d head out for a walk. Just a quick walk down the road, around the corner, up the hill, into the woods, and back to the beaver dam that’s turned forest into pond.
It was cool, by the time I got moving, but unlike other times, I didn’t bring a jacket. I often under-estimate my body’s ability to heat up, and then end up hauling all my jackets and extra layers back home with me. This time I felt daring, decided to walk on the wild side and settled for being chilly for the first half of the walk. Within half a mile, I was warmed up enough that I hardly noticed the fall chill in the air.
It is most definitely fall in New England, which is one of my favorite times of year. It’s the pay-off for the summer, when we’re all trying to make the most of the warm weather and shifted schedules and morning commutes without snarls of school traffic. It’s the long exhale after our increasingly frantic need to fit as much summer into our lives as will fit, the permission we finally have to just chill, and let events take their course. School’s back in. There’s only so much you can do about morning commute traffic when the buses are running, and we can all tell the days are getting shorter, so really, truly, it’s time to relax and just enjoy ourselves. The heat of the summer is giving way to those cool nights, we get to break out our team colors again, and we have to be more mindful about our lives as we shift between summer and winter.
This is the time when we’re forced to slow down, and we’re happy to do it. There’s only so much paradise you can cram into one summer, after all. And there’s something truly invigorating about the prospect of autumn yard work… before we have to actually do it.
As I walked down the road, I thought about this ‘n’ that and took note of a few things — the waving ornamental grasses that had thrived over the summer… what a pity that they’d be going, soon, just when they were at their peak… the running stream that babbles up to the culvert and then gurgles out the other side… the September light on the trees and plants, giving them one last good sun-wash before dusk settled in… the neighbors quietly going about their business, lost in thought and focused on their tasks… the stillness of the neighborhood, with so many people absent… the chipmunks (the ones that have remained alive after a particularly brutal summer of roadkills) skirting the pavement, keeping alive as best they can… and the ones who didn’t make it. One flattened chipmunk (and I mean flattened) was surrounded by also-flattened seeds that had probably filled its cheeks before being run down by what was likely a Very Large Vehicle.
I made it out to the dam in good time. There wasn’t much traffic, and I was in the mood to walk. Heading into the forest, I kept to the main trail, as I was wearing sandals, not hiking shoes. Quiet. More quiet. These woods always surprise me with their silence and isolation. With these wonderful hiking trails that are clearly marked and easy to get to, I would expect just about every resident of my town to be out enjoying them on such a fine afternoon. But I had the place to myself. It was only me, the distant birds, and some indeterminate small wildlife scuffling through the underbrush. I always look for my neighbors on those paths, but I rarely see them. They must all be out Doing Something. Perhaps Something Important. Or the sorts of thing you have to do now, on a September Saturday afternoon, because before you know it, you’ll be shoveling snow, sand/salting your driveway, and watching the levels of the oil in your tank.
Heading back the trail, I noticed mountain bike tracks in the mud. They were probably laid down earlier that day — not fresh, but not yet disintegrating. Here and there I saw crushed plants on the trail where the bike may have taken them down. I gave a listen, but there was no sound of any other human in the place. Back at the dam, the naturally engineered wall of sticks and much had a wild explosion of green growth running along the crest, a verdant mohawk taking advantage of the fine growing conditions.
The pond behind this dam has grown progressively larger over time, overtaking several trails in a couple of expanding phases. But the water now is covered with green algae growth, and even the wood ducks were not as present as usual. Often, when I wander back, they fly up in a flurry of insulted outrage — intruder! — but today, they were nowhere to be found. I saw a few ducks swimming far off, but I’m not sure what kind they were.
From what I could tell today, it looks like the beavers may have moved on. Where they went, I’m not sure. Maybe they died off, were killed by roaming dogs, or they relocated to more promising land. Maybe they ran the gamut of possibilities here, exhausted their resources, and called it a day on this little valley. I do know the ice storm of several years ago tore the living hell out of the trees there. Maybe there were less fitting victims for them to feast on. Perhaps they had to travel farther and farther for less and less food.
Whatever the reason — and to be honest, I can’t even confirm that my suspicions are right — they don’t seem to be around anymore. And as relieved as I am for the land that kept getting consumed by their encroaching civil engineering and tree clearing, a part of me is sad that this dynamic, pretty much unstoppable force has since left this little space in the belly of the conservation lands.
After a little bit, I walked back out of the woods and headed home. My mind was starting to fill with ideas, and those ideas were starting to get legs and walk around in my head. My thoughts were turning to work and the significant changes that will be taking place there, as surely as changes take place around this beaver pond, along these chipmunk-threatening roads. As I strode down the little hill away from the woods, I was suddenly snagged out of my reverie by the powerful scent of wild Concord grapes. They grow along that road in profusion, and sometimes you can walk for hundreds of yards, the scent of them filling your nostrils, making your mouth water. I stopped to see if I could reach any of them, but there was too much poison ivy around, and I was in shorts and sandals. I walked farther down the road, smelled more grapes, and found a small bunch that wasn’t blocked by that evil week. I found a couple of soft, purple fruit, rolled them clean between my fingers, and popped them in my mouth. The sweetness just under the skin gave way to tangy, solid fleshy fruit, and there at the center was a seed or two. I savored the grapes and spit out the seeds, hoping to sow more vines for next year. Then I picked up the pace, and my head full of a jumble of ideas about change of seasons, change of place, I headed home.
Mission accomplished — I was awake.
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