THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 24, 1994 TAG: 9410220060
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
WITH CLOUDS looking as hard as sheeted steel, October swept into town with high winds that shrieked along gutters. Cold rain sounded like glass beads hitting the window panes.
But October has softened and turned as warm and sweet as a ripe persimmon. And the shared joy of the month is revealed in the quick step and warm smiles my dog Mabel and I see on our morning and evening walks.
. ``Great sunset,'' neighbors say. Or: ``Didja see the Bay this morning? There were dolphin diving out there. The water's so blue. Beautiful.''
The month seems to be nature's benediction before the hardening of the earth. And nowhere is the blessing fuller than where we live. You hear it uttered everywhere. `October's the best month of all around here.''
Here. They always add the ``here.'' Poets have written about October's bright blue weather. So the month is surely special wherever you go. But the month seems to reach its theatrical heights on this stretch of coast. The splash of sunlight playing over our bays, rivers and streams - which flow like liquid gold in late afternoon - is truly spectacular.
In this place telescoping shafts of sunlight shimmer like golden columns holding the bright sky aloft. Dreamy clouds float like lightly crumpled scraps of silk at dusk, changing hues slowly, from gold to deep pink, then red, lavender, finally purpling into blue. I have seen panting joggers on the beach stopped in their tracks by the sight of such clouds, eyes filled with wonder at the hauntingly beautiful show to the west.
It seems sometimes as though the Creator is sitting on the floor of heaven with a color wheel in the grasp of his ancient hand, turning it ever so slowly past the dying sun.
On the beaches, goldenrod branches arch across the dunes, barely noticeable in the glare of midday but transmuted now, by the 5 o'clock sun, into fountains where Midas paused to sip.
Beyond the beach, the Bay changes from hour to hour. After a nor'easter, I have seen long white horses' manes charging across the blue water as though a chariot race were galloping underneath. And by sunset the restless Bay had stilled, an undulating meadow of black silk with the lights on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge flung across it like diamonds. Later, a gray-silver sheen coated the water's surface as the rising moon slipped like a silver pocket watch between scraps of dark clouds.
It seems as though you can see forever here on a cool October day. Familiar objects - crab pot floats, distant sailboats, channel markers, clouded from vision by midsummer haze - are brought into sharp focus by the clear air and radiant light of the moon or sun. Down the coast at Nags Head, the mammoth dune called Jockey's Ridge spills grains of sand like gold dust from its windy crest. And flying geese move across the luminous belly of a fat October moon with necks extended, heads like the top of walking sticks.
Last weekend, while walking the sandy paths of Seashore Park, my friend and I looked up for an instant during our conversation, distracted by the movement of a squirrel in the branches of a weathered beech tree. The trunk was dead but still, except for the vivid swirl of bright green and pale red leaves fluttering around the axis of its bark, like veined and luminous pieces of fine paper snipped by Matisse.
Soon, the trees will shed their wine-dipped leaves, their limbs becoming ``bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang,'' as Shakespeare said. But for now, October is flourishing. It almost seems to purr at times in satisfaction with its handsomeness. Like the fat orange tabby flopped on a windowsill catching the morning sun as we pass on our walks. I have watched that cat admire its brilliant fur with slow, lazy, approving turns of head - as proud as any sultan of his coat of gold. by CNB