Autumn Cedars
We’ve enjoyed this busy fall weekend. Starting Friday night with dinner and a show. Dinner was at Big Sky, our local Montana themed restaurant. The show was nearby, at the Rep. Lifespan of a Fact is a one act, three actor play. Tension ensues and the truth is held hostage in the balance, between a famous essayist and the young Harvard intern tasked to factcheck his latest work. On Broadway, Daniel Radcliffe played the intern. Acting as referee, the magazine’s editor rounds out this threesome.
Along the adage of never let the facts get in the way of telling a good story, this play’s theme revolves around the dichotomy between factual reporting and artistic license. Things are guaranteed not to go well, when the temperamental essayist is confronted by an overzealous intern and is forced to defend his 16 page essay from a 400+ page spreadsheet of “questions.” Based upon actual events, this story predates our current fake news, alternative facts universe, but also mirrors their issues with the truth.
On Saturday, we got out-of-town and drove down Farty-Far, to Gray Summit and the Shaw Nature Reserve. There was a huge traffic backup, caused by a combination of construction and an accident. Crazy how those two thing always seem to go together. Fortunately, it was going the other way and had dissipated by the time of our return. Shaw is part of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, so as members, our entry was free. This reserve was originally purchased, because Saint Louis air pollution was killing the garden’s pine trees and the preservation of their specie was sought through their relocation.
Our afternoon walk began in woodlands, following a stream, but soon we transitioned to the reserve’s tall-grass prairie, which we marched through, over hill and dale. Wide mowed trails permitted easy passage through this savanna, but I’m always left wondering at how early pioneers were able to navigate such an over your head sea of grass. The low, but still brilliant sun always seemed to be in our face and we both ended up peeling layers on this warming day.
Our hike ended by the above pictured pond, with its lining of cedars. This oft shot scene usually is photographed closer to sundown, when the light is more golden and the wind driven ripples have subsided. In the past, I have gotten near perfect reflections of these trees, but on this day that was not to be. Or was it? Enter Photoshop and see nature as God intended, if only, as in this case, in a highly stylized form. In the past, Anne and I have gone around and round over this issue of factual versus artistic photography. This picture may not show how things actually looked, but rather it shows them better than they really appeared.
Afterwards, we late lunched at Frisco, Webster’s newest hot restaurant property. We’ve tried to dine there on our regular trips to the Rep, but have always been shutout. Their mid-afternoon fare seems to be more our speed.
On Sunday, our possible trifecta of dining out came to a screeching halt, when I served lunch in, but I was able to lure Anne out on a bike ride to Forest Park. It was another perfect Fall day, whose memory we will savor in this week to come, because the weather forecast looks more like Winter than Fall, with both cold and snow predicted. We saw a snapping turtle beside the bike path. It looked like it had just crawled out of the primordial ooze, which it better be crawling back into again. We saw fellow teamies Chris and Anne on the bike path and again at the DeMun Kaldi’s. We sipped caffeinated brews together and enjoyed the last light of what has been a wonderful weekend.