SEP-B-9
RETURN FROM
TO RE-ENTER DC AND DERWOOD AND A WEEK
OF PACKING UP FOR THE NEXT INTERNATIONAL
TRIP:
Abruptly, it feels like fall: cool days with windy scattered clouds and shorter evenings with a hint of frost on the pumpkin in the morning. I felt very much like the “back-to-school” fall feeling in the Midwest, as there were talks of football games and the college camaraderie that comes from such a shared reunion as that which the Croskerys have had for 26 years straight going to a University of Michigan home football game in the Big House in Ann Arbor. I wish I were there!
I am aloft,
over the
I had
another chance to experience “Her Kind of Hunt” on a return to Maiffat Lake
Farms and the barn and stall where Porte Bonheur (or “Porter”) is regally
housed in a large stall on the end.
Virginia has the drill down to a very classic model, with here large
tack trunk, and a peg for Porter’s bridle and bit, and another peg for his
halter and halter lead rope, and still another for the saddle and the blankets
and pads that go along with it. I
watched here put Porter through his paces in the ring and around the racks,
even doing a few low jumps. He was
behaving and enjoyed his workout—even though it was windy at the start and he
does not like wind. That was also true
for us as we went out the front door of 712 W.
I have
learned a bit more about “
Virginia is happy in her smaller world, with her new little house, her 22 students and “full-time” but rather easy teaching job, her recital and performance schedule, her overabundant and quite luxury-consumption livestock, and her great new diesel truck (“How does anyone get along without one?”) and ht spectacular brand-new Trailette two horse slant trailer with the goose neck fitting. I would like to live in the trailer myself, and there is a space for me over the goose neck shelf ahead of the tack room in the front of the trailer! For one of the only times of her life she is alone and productive and enjoying it. She does not do the “alone thing” as well as I have so long, so she is sure that this will pass and she will be looking for something else, but just now she is not eager to change her rather comfortable niche for any other, so this may mean we will wait and see. Several of the plans around Derwood and visits to family and trips planned conjointly in the near future may be put back, but the trip to San Antonio in the pre-Thanksgiving week and the Michigan trip to deliver the Bronco and pick up the Audi as well as a post-Christmas visit around the Grand Rapids families seems still to be able to work into our near-term plans.
I have to get back to a scramble that includes much of the postponed academic work—all of the readings and reportings of the ELDP, and a couple of articles and editorials that have been promised, and a whole series of projects that will require early completion before the crush of year end events overwhelms them—like the photo albums I have been labeling and the year-end letter they will become a sample part of, and a number of trips still booked, as to the Berkshires and the Eastern Shore.
So, it was
a poignant and beautiful low-key visit to