Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. — George Eliot
It’s finally here — the other side of Labor Day. That means that autumn can’t be far behind. Since I was a little girl, autumn has been my favorite season. Cooler weather, back to school, groups starting up again — scouts, orchestra, literary magazine. Even now, there is always a sense of new beginnings in the fall. Lately I’ve been watching the geese practicing their “V” formations, which they’ll use for real in a few weeks as they migrate farther south. The garden is winding down and we bring in a small bowl of tomatoes each morning, knowing that it will soon be our last. The roses — which have stayed ridiculously long this year — are getting brown, as are the echinacea daisies and sweet hydrangeas.
I love fall so much that when Tim and I decided to get married, I asked him if we could wait to do it in the fall. And so on October 5, 1991 we tied the knot in beautiful Burlington, Vermont; our reception was at the Boathouse on Lake Champlain. Gorgeous fall colors, crisp fall air . . . we couldn’t have asked for a better day.
A few weeks before the wedding, however, it occurred to us that in all of our (my) careful long-distance planning
(we had moved to Boston back in May, but still wanted a fall Vermont wedding) we had forgotten to plan a honeymoon. So we did a little scrambling and decided to explore some of our brand new state on our honeymoon — Nantucket, to be exact.
Nantucket in the fall is a treasure. The crowds have gone, the temps are cooler and the colors are magical. There’s a little extra energy in the water (and in the air) and everybody seems calmer once “high season” has passed. You can easily get into restaurants and, if you go before Columbus Day, most of the shops and galleries are still open.
We stayed in the then-nearly-new Nantucket Inn, out by the airport (remember the TV show Wings?!). We got a great deal on one of the cottages with a fireplace, with several of our meals included. We could swim in the pool and relax in the hot tub and still find time to explore the island, its restaurants and shops, and we did. We had a grand time at 21 Federal — I still remember the amazing pumpkin soup served in its own little pumpkin — and enjoyed The Brotherhood of Thieves for good burgers and beer a few days later. We brought our bicycles and enjoyed Nantucket’s many bicycle paths. And it was along these very paths that we almost got divorced.
Edible?
You see, Tim loves to discover new things. Places, people, museums, beaches . . . and mushrooms. October is mushroom season in Nantucket. I did not know this, or I might have chosen a less risky destination. Like a mall. But as we pedaled around the island together, we found myriad trails with all kinds of mushrooms by the side of the road. Big fat brown ones; beautiful spotted red ones; ugly black ones; tall high-stemmed psilocybes (which I was sure were hallucinogenic); creepy puffballs; little white buttons, and so on. The problem was, Tim wanted to eat them. All of them. He told me that the odds of our finding a poisonous one were very slim. Somehow, that wasn’t good enough for me.
Before too long, I took the lead on the biking and drove us straight over to a bookstore, where I quickly bought a
copy of Simon & Schuster’s Guide to Mushrooms. Five hundred and twelve pages of color plates were interesting but not very informative, when push came to shove. Almost every ‘shroom we plucked came with the warning, “Edibility is uncertain.” That was all I needed to hear. And, since we had been married less than a week and had not yet thought about doing a will, it was going to have to be good enough for Tim, too. He was not happy and, I suspect, tempted fate by trying a few when I was out of range.
I wish I could show you the photos we took of our enormous and incredible harvest, which we proudly posed on a table outside our cottage. Alas, they were taken with a film camera and that album is still packed away somewhere, even after living here in Richmond for nearly five years. Instead, I’m sharing photos of The Mushrooms & Flora of September 2010, taken in our backyard and along the walking path that I tread every day with our dog, Maxine. I still have no idea what any of them are and whether they’re edible or not, and I’m not about to find out. I’m happy just to look at them and know that October, my favorite month, is not far behind.
Then summer fades and passes and October comes. We’ll smell smoke then, and feel an unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure. — Thomas Wolfe
Buon viaggio!
Linda Dini Jenkins is a card-carrying Italophile, travel planner, freelance writer, and amateur photographer. Travel is her passion, so writing about her travels just comes naturally. She hopes all her travelers find a way to express their joys, surprises, and fears as they travel and gives every traveler a nifty journal to help smooth the way. Learn more…
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