Pumpkin time on Sauvie Island

Since Covid-19 arrived to change the lives of everyone on the planet, Sue and I have gradually settled into a pattern of seeing each other on weekends. She cares for Eliana two full days a week, including assisting in her online first grade experience; and I spend two days a week with my grandchildren after their online school. We both need recovery time, and we both have activities that require our attention on days when we aren’t with the children, so we’ve worked out weekends together. Neither of us likes to be online more than we have to, during those two or three sweet days of time together, so I'm backblipping this Sunday photo and extra on Monday morning back at my place.

This weekend we started reading aloud Isabel Wilkerson’s brilliant book Caste. We spent Sunday out at Sauvie Island, where the pumpkins are being harvested, the sand hill cranes are chortling wetly, and the geese are migrating. It was a glorious day. My 35mm lens is not great for birds, and the thrill of the migration is not in my opinion the sight but the sound--the mad fierce beating of wings, the call and response, the profusion of life, the proclamation of it all.