All of a sudden, the favored season is here. The summer - eventful and memorable as it was - has come and gone in a flash. Moving day is past, and the kids are back in school. Jordan’s now the oldest kid at his daycare, and it’ll soon be time for us to look into his next steps. Meanwhile, life marches on. I’m heading toward my final distance run this training season, followed by a prolonged taper into my first full marathon in October. In between - time with family, time with friends, an unexpected but welcome upcoming visit to Maryland (Jordan’s first), the usual autumn projects, and a host of new challenges and directions in the workplace. I’m trying to get deeper into prose writing; even photography feels more intentional. But it’s not easy to juggle the hats, to pivot from one mode to another, to tend to all the varied parts of me that make up the kinda-functional whole. Time, as always, is the limiting reagent. Fall, for me, is always a marker of time’s passage in my life. Especially here in New England, it is the most beautiful season, the most ephemeral one, the time that makes me look inward and forward. I make my resolutions in the fall, rather than with the new calendar year. And every fall, certain commonalities emerge that, if one views them only superficially, make it seem like little-to-nothing has changed at all. Another academic year, another foliage shoot. The window units come out, the days grow shorter. Once again, gathering fallen maple leaves from the sidewalk.
And yet, so much has changed. A year ago, I was preparing for my first half-marathon in five years - nervous as hell, with no thoughts of ever achieving more; today, I can wake up after any decent night of sleep and run twenty miles for kicks. A year ago, I was taking field naturalist coursework; today, it is gratifying to look around and realize how many patterns, plants, and species I recognize (and know a lotta shit about) in my surrounding world and neighborhood. A year ago, I was grappling with my roles as a father, a husband, and a human being who wanted to be more than my normative roles; today, I’m still grappling, but a lot more comfortable with who I am and where I am in life. I am where I need to be. I’m going where I need to go, and doing what I need to do. There’s still not enough time. But I’ll get there eventually. And I’m looking forward to what comes next.
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September 6, 2025: A morning visit to Walden Pond with Jane, Jordan, and my parents on their last weekend with us this month. It’s our first time visiting this place since five years ago (almost to the day), and so much about us (and so little about Walden) has changed. The pond’s southern shoreline is heavily fenced off for construction of a new bathhouse for swimmers and boaters, and the weekend atmosphere is no more peaceful or idyllic than it was during the pandemic. But such is life nearly two centuries after Thoreau’s time. We take a family selfie with his statue (Henry holding the phone), and Jordan spends an hour tramping around the shore and tossing rocks into the water, before we move on to Concord to explore the annual Ag Day farmer’s market.
September 10, 2025: My annual self-imposed, self-care day on the Wednesday before fellowship interviews get underway (thrice makes a tradition, right?). I take a long, ranging morning walk through South Brookline, documenting the first signs of fall creeping in along the Emerald Necklace, and grabbing an outdoor lunch with Turkish ice cream at Dolma Mediterranean Cuisine. At Wards Pond, I photograph the swan family we have been visiting intermittently since the spring - the cygnets all grown but still bearing their downy juvenile feathers. “They grow up so fast,” says the lady at pond-side with me. “I want to see them fly,” I respond.
