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October 4. When I leave the house there is sunshine on the
pink rose beside the Nineteenth Century brick house across the street. Roses
last beautifully for days in this cool weather. In the park, birds are moving.
Several geese honk across the sky, out of sight behind the trees. A raucous
tribe of jays thrusts gracefully with powerful wings like angels. But the
waxwings, so garrulously evident for the past several weeks, have vanished. It
is Saturday, so a different cross-section of people inhabits the park in
mid-morning, mostly middle-aged, well-dressed people jogging or walking their
dogs. One woman with two dogs stops to chat about the fall colour and I observe
it's late this year. She tells me she heard on the radio it is 85 per cent
finished in Algonquin Park. Here there is little colour except in the sumacs.
But the goldenrod and asters are starting to look threadbare. On the way home, a bank of dark
clouds rushes up from behind the Owens-Corning plant and a few drops of
rain start pattering on the gravel path. A cloud of grey and white pigeons,
looking silver, shifts and dodges around the industrial silos, bright against
the sky. I quicken my pace as the rain falls more heavily, but get sidetracked
down the path to Old Man Willow. The river is still, and the rain on its
surface makes a glittering sheet, like stars appearing and dying in an
instant. The ripples make a galaxy of rings. Now I am hurrying. Rain casts a
grey veil across the edge of the woods. I stride into the bottom of Kingsmill
Avenue, but in the turnaround I stop short. A toad carcass lies in the rain,
recently run over, its body no bigger than my thumb. Predominant in its
entrails is a yellow tube, reminiscent of yesterday's cooked macaroni. Its skin
is leathery, its head squeezed upwards as if in supplication.
October 6. First hard frost. The grasses, raspberry canes
and ragweed are laced. It perspires
as a mist from the roofs of houses along Kingsmill Avenue. In the sunlight,
droplets fall like stars from the great elm's celestial canopy. The
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