Fall is here. My favorite time of the year, anywhere, but especially here in Marin. Not only do we get our lovely Indian Summer, but things start to slow down. Frenetic summer activities have given over to quiet mornings; kids trudging to school through the crinkly leaves collecting in the street gutters. Soon, wood smoke from afternoon fires will hang in the air.
I am more myself at this time of the year than any other. Maybe more reflective because of the coming holidays, but also because harvest time seems to make the world close in on itself. There are less distractions because everywhere, the pace is slowing down. Even Mother Nature is snuggling down, setting the sun early and pulling the blankets up over her head for her long winter's nap.
I often hear East Coast transplants complain that it doesn't look like fall out here. It's nonsense that we West Coast babies do not get seasonal colors. Just look to our gorgeous hills turned the color of a lion's mane. And our bonus is that in a few short weeks they will be luscious emerald green.
Of all the changes since my childhood, indeed, since my fathers' we've at least done a good job preserving our open spaces. And I don't just mean Mt. Tam to the south and Mt. Burdell to the north. In spite of the hillside homes, there is still plenty of Marin left that my grandmother would recognize if she were still alive.
I had the fun of looking through a book of Marin history recently with pictures of long skirted women and waist coated men standing on dirt roads beside their trusty Model T's. But then I lifted my eyes to the hills behind them and saw my own backyard. My beautiful Marin - the graceful waves of hills dotted with our gnarled and stoic Oaks. It was unmistakeable!
And then it hit me. I feel the same warm afternoon breezes scented with the dry wild grasses that blew over their faces. They heard the same gentle songs of the chickadees and the spirited squawk of the blue jays that greet me every morning. When they turned their faces to the late October sun and let the rays warm them opening their eyes to survey the then wide open spaces, they loved the place just as I do.
They did have more of the original Marin than we have, but how much else has actually changed? Have WE changed? In that same Marin history book I stumbled upon a chapter describing the educational concerns of early Marin.
A 1975 researcher studying issues impacting the public school system since 1891 found close parallels between concerns voiced at School Board meetings, including, Lack of Funding, Class Size, Poor Curriculum, Outdated Facilities, Drug Abuse, and the only one I did not recognize, Segregation/Integration.
I'd like to think that even if we don't solve our educational woes in the next 100 years, my great grandchildren will look wonderingly at pictures of me, standing beside my trusty Volvo station wagon and recognize behind me, the same lovely backdrop of Marin and understand that as important as it was to me and to my grandparents to preserve what of Marin we could, that it will be just as important to them, and their grandchildren.
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