Fall Falling Leaves Moon
Maybe I’ll look back a year from now, from somewhere high in the Rockies when the sky hits mountain blue and the cirrus mimic the tails of nearby horses, maybe I’ll look back and remember this day. 62, sunny, blue skies with high wispy cirrus clouds and leaves just starting to turn. And a drive east toward Stillwater, toward the St. Croix, with the intention of lunch with Bill Schmidt at the Gasthaus Bavarian Hunter, but finding it full, going to Sal’s Angus Grill, a biker bar in Whitworth. Whitworth? An intersection, near as I can tell, with a huge ballroom and Sal’s, the whole town.
The drive from here took me east through the northern reaches of the Twin Cities exurbs, across Anoka County with its sod farms and nurseries, lakes and marshes and forest, then across Washington County with its expensive country estates, more marsh and lakes and plenty of cute decorations for Halloween. It was an hour so of ambling through the very southern end of the Boreal Forest, seeing the blue-black lakes reflecting back the sky, choppy with light winds. A lot of other folks out, too, just driving, seeing an October wonder day.
Bill invited me to lunch and I picked the spot since he was driving on from there to see the color along the St. Croix, something he and his late wife, Regina, would often do, meandering as the day took them. That’s how we ended up at Sal’s, wandering north from the Gasthaus. We ate, talked about the move to Colorado, his family, but mostly we affirmed our now long friendship, passing an October lunch with each other.
And so the end times have begun. I expect no rapture, no bugles, no seals breaking, no anti-Christ rising but I do anticipate moving from this place, my home for over 40 years. With that move so much will become past. The Gasthaus. An easy lunch with a friend of many years. Access on a whim to houses and neighborhoods where I’ve lived or where Kate lived. The cultural riches here: the Guthrie, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the MIA especially. Those early years in medical practice for Kate. All of my ministry. Raising kids time. All that will become more past than now since their physical context will be far away.
The end times, at least the Christian version, is followed by that great wakin’ up morning when the dead rise from their graves. So too it will be with us following the end times here, a whole new life will rise from the ashes of this one. I look forward to it.
