A couple of cold nights, with stars brightly overlooking us through the redwood tree tops. My daughter has moved into her new cottage, home from Kauai, and as this first shocking cold snap comes over us, her new natural gas fireplace has decided to malfunction. We played with it for hours, wondering how efficient it would be in winter, and now that she needs it, it doesn't work at all. I placed a call with the serviceman and he will be over in the morning to have a look-see. The pilot light teases us by shining brightly when the correct button is pushed, shimmers momentarily, dancing in front of the gas jets as if promising to burst into full flame, then just as quickly slips back into extinction, abandoning her to the cold.

The drum beat of the holidays is accelerating. Two days from Thanksgiving, and one would think it is the end of the world. Lists, plans, expectations--more preparation for a couple of holidays than I see the rest of the year. Cousins flying south, a daughter flying east--it seems like a hundred different categories of human activity all tossed together at once, as if a meteor were about to fall into our midst. And then I read yesterday that we may have a comet, ISON (named after the International Astronomical Union), appearing in the sky right around Christmas. A modern Bethlehem star that may bring the shopping world to its better senses, such that we might sleep a more relaxing and heavenly peace.

The sky today is heavily mixed with clouds, soft furry ones that lay stretched across the blue dome like cuddly blankets, the kind I never see the rest of the year. Nature is inviting me to step outside, get away from keyboard and books, and have a closer look at this slow transition into winter. So many birds have been gathering along the shore of the bay. I don't know why the abnormal number. Maybe related to the easy availability of food? The humpback giants are still in town too! I sat on a bench in Capitola village a couple of days ago with a pair of binoculars and watched them waving their fan tails above the horizon.

I need to think about packing. I'm off to the great southwest desert for two weeks, beginning in just a couple of days. The San Jacinto Mountains have been whitened by arctic effects. I can hardly wait to sit beside warm palm trees and look up at them. I feel privileged to turn my nose up at the winter weather and remove myself from it for a spell. The chill, the Christmas shopping insanity, the hovering over gas furnaces--I will hardly think about such things while away, but the whales give me great pleasure and I hope that they are still around when I come home.