The Voltage Gate

Never express yourself more clearly than you think.

-Niels Bohr

I'm trying Niels, truly.

Things have been slow here, I know. The job process has been incredibly tedious and time consuming, especially since I am trying to land something by October. I have a temperamental personal writing process which I allow to be disrupted by outside influence a bit too often for my taste. I have spent some time on some creative writing (years in the making), but the blog has taken the brunt of my distraction.

On the up and up, fall is coming, and that in itself is reason to celebrate, especially given my proximity to so many large scale natural areas. It has begun to cool down up here already, and the September rains are falling about two weeks early. A visible layer of fog, like a brick, was sitting over Frostburg last night.

I have been obsessing about visiting one place in particular. Cranesvillle Swamp is beautiful in the fall. The sphagnum rusts in October, propping up little white lilies and the ever present, ever melancholy pine snags. I haven't been since a field trip out there with my ecology class; a trip right around Halloween would be perfect.

The Appalachian fall festivals start in a month or so, which means that my fridge will be stocked with apple butter, apple cider, pumpkin breads and other folky treats. There is an apiary in Somerset County that shows up at most of the festivities with the most wonderful gummy bears, made with, of course, honey.

I'll be in the mountains by tomorrow evening, but I will have some reposts to share about the ecology, evolution and conservation of a strange creature, the binturong. Hopefully the time away will be a bit more productive; I want to finish the last two terrestrial biomes in the basics series by the end of this month, and start on aquatic systems. I also have a stack of books/papers to go through, and in the near future, many potential pics to share of this area in the fall.

Here's to breaking through the tedium.