Going, Part 2

I’m in Philly now, staying with friends. They live in a boutique-y part of the city called Chestnut Hill. The homes and businesses and churches here are built with dark, local stone. The kind that seems to absorb light on rainy nights.

My friends complain of the cold. I smile. It’s not cold here. If there’s one thing the North Country can teach you, it’s how to make friends with winter.

But in Philly, it’s still fall. Plenty of trees have lime green leaves at the bottom and fiery red tops. They look like slowly exploding fireworks.

This is a good transition point between the North Country and Denver. I can once again walk to a seemingly endless variety of shops and restaurants. Traffic, real city traffic is alien to me. Horns honk. Cars whiz by and I double- and sometimes triple-check the roads before crossing.

Navigating this kind of landscape is something I’ll have to re-learn.

But strolling the main avenue is so fun: the signs and shop displays. The farm stand at the corner bursting with produce and people. It’s life and a lot of it.

Punctuating all this, a flock of swallows shoots out of some trees across the street, swirls around in the wind overhead and ducks into the greenery of a nursery just a few steps in front of me.

I am flying, too. It’s time to load up and get back on the road. I’ll send pictures.