Another gorgeous autumn day has fallen upon us. I feel fortunate to be able to enjoy these pleasant sunny days, no matter which one of the week, without concern for returning to the work force on a Monday morning. Last evening I drove up into the mountains to visit with some old-time friends. We all met at the one friend's house because his is the largest and prettiest, looking out over an apple orchard and the furthest edges of the Monterey Bay. One of the other friends I had not seen in forty years.

When you haven't seen someone for that long, the conversation more easily lapses into what we were doing forty years ago, than what we have been doing for the last one, two, or ten. Those later years become forgotten for an evening, while the earlier ones come temporarily into sharper focus. We were all surfers with adventurous spirits, at a time in California's past when living was more carefree, so the stories we conjured up until late last evening flowed out of us like a bottle of well-aged and tasty wine. We talked seemingly endlessly of surfing trips we had taken into Baja, Costa Rica, remote locations in California, and Hawaii, in the days when such places were not so popular because they had not yet been developed for regular tourism. An evening of entertaining escapism into the escapades of my past life.

Some of the adventures should be written down for prosperity, but then, everybody has such fond memories of what our lives were like so many years ago. Our memories are often tinted by age to make them seem greater (or worse) than they truly were when we experienced them. Recalling them and expressing them to friends may blow them even further out of proportion. That is a big part of the fun of sharing old memories. We know there will be some exaggeration, some charge of emotion that comes from recollecting moments that now seem bigger than our normal daily living.

Wordsworth says poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility. He would say the same about a group of friends sharing old stories, maybe even go so far as to call them a society of poets. Poets for an evening.