Warm and Soulful and Filling

There is that spewing, almost electrically sputtering moment, just after a kitchen match is struck, when the flame quite literally leaps out of and off the stick, erupting in a frizzle of splashing yellow that almost immediately mellows into its more balanced blaze. I've been thinking about that erupting instant in recent days driving around the country roads of southeastern Vermont. It's as though the white-skinned birches have all been struck at once, their yellow leaves erupting in precisely that luminescent splash; struck into flame and then scattered throughout the mountainsides as though candles on a dappled birthday cake. There aren't as many reds as one might like -- perhaps we arrived just past their prime, or perhaps they never matured into that rich sugary hue -- but the yellows and coppers and bronzes and greens are ample autumnal blessing. There is a warmth to the colors -- not as riotously celebratory, perhaps, as in other years, but richer somehow; even soulful. The foliage may not evoke giddy "ooh's" and "ah's" this time around, but it is nonetheless a "deep breath" kind of landscape. And we have needed a few deep breaths.

Today, we used the driving to get us to the King Arthur Flour Factory, Store, and Educational Center in Norwich, Vermont -- a half-hour or so to the north. We were signed up for simultaneous baking classes -- Pizza Making for Lori; Autumn Pasta for me. For four hours we went our separate ways, both up to our elbows in various flours and doughs and shapes and ends. For me it was a refresher course for skills learned last year in Italy, though here we used table top pasta machines. I was interested in honing my more mechanical skills with the dough. Mid-afternoon, Lori emerged with two pizza boxes full of her work which we sampled on the drive back to the Inn, and I carried the satisfaction of two pasta recipes successfully accomplished, plus a box full of two different types and two different shapes that I hadn't a clue what to do with -- until Chef Jason met us at the door of the Inn, gathered up my box and headed off into the kitchen with the promise of something special for our dinner. That may well be the definition of "value added lodging."

Deep breaths, then, born of both sight and taste. And company, of course. My beautiful bride is sitting across the room in front of the fire, reading, taking a few deep breaths of her own, unaware for the moment of how grateful I am to be sharing these precious yellows, muted reds, vibrant greens, and warm, mellowing coppers, bronzes, pastas and pizzas. And the promise of tomorrow. If this very moment and all that it savors weren't so filling -- and the thought of it ending weren't so forbidding -- I don't think I could wait. But wait I will, preferring to make of every moment a deep breath of its own.