Greeted by the albino squirrel

Well, I've made it to Ohio. I can't get over how strange and absolutely surreal it is that a few hours ago, I was walking briskly through the streets of Seattle under a dusky darkening sky in order to catch my light rail to the airport...I promptly fell asleep at takeoff, and woke up at 10,000 feet to a stunning sunrise eclipsing the full moon.


And now it's morning in Oberlin, and I'm back in this place for the first time in nearly a year, and it feels very odd indeed.

A couple times throughout the flight, my eyes drifted open. I'd forgotten that the moon is (nearly?) full right now - so the view was unbelievably spectacular...the moonlight was so bright it reflected off the clouds we were flying above, lending them to a sort of golden-silhouetted look, and the whole dark blanket was punctuated with occasional holes into the glittering night-lit towns on the ground below. I love red eye flights.

In the interest of not disturbing my kind host too early in the morning, I have staked out a swinging bench in Tappan Square to listen to the birds and bask in the sunshine that's pouring through the trees and evaporating the morning dew on the grass. It's so much warmer here than it is in Seattle right now. The albino squirrels are here, as they've always been, and came out to greet me.


I'm warmed by the thought of the lazy days ahead I have here to lounge in this good Midwestern sunshine, indulge in the simultaneous relief to have moved on from this place and yet still mourn the loss of my past life in this state, and catch up on some general, much-needed self-reflection.