Wow, I think, is a holy word.

It's what we say when we are overpowered, for good or ill.

A word for when words fail.

I've been using it a lot lately.

My father's death took me on an odyssey which has not yet ended. I've only now begun to feel the full emotional impact, after the blur of events subsided enough for me to look back on it and say 'wow'.



To continue with the theme, I'm now about to leave on a long-scheduled DMTree sponsored trip to Amsterdam and Iceland.

Wow.

I'd be in a state over the trip, even under the best of circumstances. As it is, I feel like it will be good for me, but how it fits into the mourning process is not clear.

I guess I'm about to find out.



Routine is long since left behind. I want to get back to the Arboretum, but haven't found the time yet. I'm not even sure what I want to say, but figuring that out is also part of the passage I am now involved in.



I all but missed the Fall, yet I was not unaware. Instead of appreciating the season for itself, it now becomes a backdrop, a tincture coloring the memory of my father's last days, along with the subway series, and the election that made people say 'wow'.

For me, these things are no more than context.



Still, I would not go without a gesture to the trees.

I did manage to get up to the Park, on Veteran's Day, which, come to think of it, is the first holiday I have failed to note here. Wow.

Anyway, I'm making no commitments, but I hope to be back soon. In the meantime, here are a couple of views which I hope will inspire wows of a welcome nature.