The week of cool and even cold nights warming to hot days with bright sun ended Saturday. The sky foretold change with high wispy clouds dimming the afternoon. Sunday brought gray sky and by mid-morning, rain. Rain was tentative at first, stopping to allow the forest to exhale smoky mist. I took a second look to make sure it was not the smoke of fire. Then rain settled in and for the day and night, and this morning, as I begin to write (Monday), light rain continues to fall and the mountains are a smoky, dull green. The sky above is a hard, irregular ceiling of white and shades of gray. The feeling of season continues to shift as we approach September.
It seems that I have time on my mind if not on my hands, though I do see time on my hands: scars. Just on my left hand: the time I cut my thumb at Camp Pemigewasset when I was nine; the time I nicked the base of my index finger with a chain saw when I was in my late teens (a lucky escape); a ragged scar coming downtime center of my palm from the hand surgery I had four years ago; a blackened middle fingernail from a hammer blow two weeks ago; a scabby line on my palm from the slip of a hand saw one week ago. This kind of memory written into the cells of my hand. The permanent scars are the oddity, for skin cells are replaced (rebuilt) every 16 months or so, and with the scars recalled: memory. Of course, that is just my left hand, and I could recount many tales of other scars and aches of which the lingering pain in my ribs and shoulder is most recent. From a molecular standpoint, my entire body rebuilds itself every some number of years (seven seems to be the popular number). After my death and the shedding of flesh, DNA memory will linger in my bones as well as scattered in my descendants. Eventually my bones will disappear, or, perhaps, turn into stone and last a while longer. These carry a sort of memory too, a morphology, a shape and structure that tells of my place among the forking paths of evolution.










