Mount Vernon Harvest Festival

I decided to stay home this weekend, having ran long in the North Cascades last weekend, and knowing I’ll be running Baker Lake next weekend. Home is Mount Vernon, Washington.

It seems like I’ve gotten so busy over the last year or two---I feel out of breath sometimes. There’s my running, but then there’s also my work, my volunteer stuff, the people I know, my house. Plus there's so many channels on television anymore, and I have a lot of spices and cookbooks in my kitchen, and I have so many books, and too many magazine subscriptions and Iphone apps, and I know I should just ebay half of the stuff around my house, if I knew how. I'm being facetious in writing this--I don't have kids, and so I can't be that busy, or so some friends tell me, and I suppose they're right, in a sense, but I do fill up my time, and an unplanned weekend at home feels so good sometimes. It seems like all my weekends in my 20s were unplanned.

So, on to the next paragraph.

I managed to get a bit of trail time on Chuckanut this morning, after sleeping in late. The wind was cutting over Chinscraper, lots of leaves dropping. It wasn’t much of a run for me, just a hike/climb to the top, and a jog down. Mainly, I conducted caveman skills tests, like throwing rocks and sticks at trees (which I imagined to be rabbits), and identifying edible mushrooms. If I had a coach, they wouldn’t be happy with my efforts this morning, but I did show real hunter and gatherer potential.

After Chuckanut, I headed back to Mount Vernon, my home's town, to check out the Farmer’s Market, and ended up enjoying the Fall Harvest Street Festival, the Friends of the Library booksale, and the John Deere tractor rally. I bought eight books for $4. I have a real book problem. Or maybe it's a book challenge. The tractors were cool. Nothing runs like a Deere, or so my friend Aaron tells me.

For the record, the Skagit Valley is going harvest crazy this weekend, with competing harvest festivals in Mount Vernon and Burlington, as well as the Oyster Run out in Anacortes on Sunday. On the way back from C-nut Mountain, I saw two or three roadside organic produce stands, and truck full of corn with a sign, 6 ears for $1. It’s a wonderful time of year here, at least when the sun is out. And it is.

Now I’m off to feed the birds, prune some trees, and maybe cut some wood. Just a really nice, forgettable fall day. (: