Something was amiss last night. It was in the warm night air. Stepping out of the cabin where I make tofu, there was no November chill in the air. A warm night breeze wafted over the dark pond.

At dawn, the ducks went wild with their bath, diving deep, splashing, and flapping their wet wings with pure joy. Perhaps they thought winter was over.

With today’s bread order cooling, it was off to the cabin to label and pack up the tofu. A fanged thing greeted me on the door. A harvestmen was waiting for something to ambush. To be an insect must be to live in a nightmarish world of monsters. Imagine the tales children would have to tell if they had to sneak by monsters like this on their way to and from school. “Mommy, Bobby didn’t make it home today, the Fanged-Thing got him!” would be an oft heard phrase in such a world.

On the way to deliver bread and tofu, I see that a giant has fallen. The massive cottonwood in the parking lot of BowEdison Fine Food & Drink has met its demise. A crew of tree fellers has been working on it since yesterday, and now the giant is but a crumpled carcass on the ground.

All day the warm south winds have gusted. Huge clouds billow above the mountains. I see flocks of swans shooting by at jet speed, riding the howling winds. The day ends as warm as it started. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It’s a far cry from a snowbound Seattle Thanksgiving of some thirty years ago when my husband came in our four-wheel drive Tercel to fetch me from the downtown office building where I worked. That evening, we passed bus after bus which was stuck in the knee-deep snow which blanked the hills of Seattle. This Thanksgiving will be nothing like that. This Thanksgiving will be more like Maui in the Pacific Northwest.