On Wednesday, I took my dog, Liam, for a walk in the woods. The day was mild, and in my imagination, I caught a faint whiff of sap being boiled into maple syrup. I am always eager for maple syrup season to begin. First of all, I love all things maple, including candy, butter, sugar, donuts, you name it. Second, when it’s maple syrup time, it means that spring is not far away, and despite the mud and the black flies, spring is most welcome in Maine after many months of dark and cold.

The woods in winter are stark and quiet, yet they have their own beauty. Purple shadows slant across the snow between the trees, and the muted colors—dark green, brown, and white—have a pleasing austerity. It’s as though nature has put away her palette and paints and is giving herself a good rest before taking them out again for the exuberance of spring, where the riot of colors—green, yellow, pink—bedazzle the senses.

Liam ranged ahead and then behind me. He seldom stayed by my side. On the snow, he found many interesting things to sniff, and at one point, he found something so enticing that he rolled and rolled and rolled in it. He must have picked up an odor—fortunately I couldn’t smell it—because my cat Sherlock certainly gave him the once over when we returned.

As I walked in the woods, I thought of my son-in-law Mike’s 30th birthday party on Sunday, and what a curious sensation I had while I was there. As Mike blew out the candles on his cake, it was as though I were my mother, instead of myself, watching him. Now, my mother has been dead for nearly 5 years, and I think of her often. But this was different. It  really did seem as though I were her, a bookend, if you will, to E.B. White’s lovely essay, “Once More to the Lake,” when he identified so strongly with his son that he could actually feel what his son was feeling.

I suppose, in a way, it’s not surprising. My husband and I are now the older generation, and as such we are no longer the center of the family, busy juggling career, children, and home. Quite rightly, Shannon, Mike, and our other daughter Dee now hold that center position as we move to the outer edges, watching them deal with the joys and challenges that life brings. In a way, it’s a little sad, but it is also fitting. One thing ends, and another begins.

As I was having these deep thoughts and watching the dog and snapping pictures of the winter woods, my left leg suddenly sunk to its knee in the thawing snow, and it tipped me enough off-balance so that I fell. Fortunately, I was not hurt, and because I am 65 pounds lighter than I once was, getting up was not a problem.

So onward we went. Unless we have another deep freeze, I probably won’t walk in the woods again until the snow is nearly gone. Nobody likes falling, and the older you get, the less you like it. (My husband can certainly attest to this.)

We made it home without further incident, and after tea and some cozy time on the couch reading the New Yorker, I made corn bread and a shrimp, broccoli, garlic and zucchini stir-fry with soy sauce and sesame oil. On top of the stir-fry were ground peanuts and a splash of a ginger marinade.

A very good way to end the day.

Here are some pictures from the walk:

It’s been exactly one week after the election, and in that week we’ve had a northeaster rip up the east coast and inflict even more misery on New York and, especially, New Jersey. General Petraeus is involved in the type of scandal that tabloids dream of—an extra-marital affair, threatening emails, and top-level stupidity. But what has especially caught my attention is how conservatives were completely blindsided by Obama’s re-election. It seems they had a complete and unshakable belief that Romney would win. After all, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and other conservative commentators told them so, which meant it must be true.

Except it wasn’t. In a divided country, Obama won by a comfortable margin. Not huge, but comfortable. The numbers had been close for quite some time, but somehow many conservatives didn’t allow for the possibility of an Obama victory. This includes Romney himself, who reportedly didn’t even have a concession speech ready should the unthinkable and the unbelievable—to conservatives—occur.

In short, the Republicans were gobsmacked, and they have been scrabbling furiously ever since last Tuesday. And why were they so gobsmacked? In part because too many conservatives listen only to news channels such as Fox, where they hear the reality according to the Far Right, which all too often doesn’t reflect reality itself. In the reality of the Far Right, minorities don’t count. They might be deviant, pathetic moochers, but they don’t vote in large enough numbers to affect the election. Women don’t count. This allows Far-Right candidates to feel perfectly comfortable saying any number of ignorant, reprehensible things about rape and still feel as though they have women’s votes. This smug confidence even allowed the most radical element to cast aspersions on birth control.  Moderates on both sides don’t count. They can be easily swayed by the Far Right message. Rust belt workers don’t count. Let the auto industry sink, no matter how much damage this will cause. Blue-collar workers in Michigan and Ohio will nonetheless flock to the Republican candidate. After all, isn’t free-market ideology worth the pain? The poor don’t count. Heck, they don’t even vote.

So here we have the world according to the Far Right and Fox News, and it must be so. Except it isn’t. At least not for a sizable majority.

Now it can be said, with some justification, that the National Public Radio and Television crowd have the same kind of echo chamber, and while it’s true that Public Radio and Television have liberal leanings, there are fundamental differences. For the most part, the news anchors are neutral, but most important, both sides of any issue are presented. NPR and PBS have taken a certain amount of heat for this. Many liberals feel as though the truth should be presented and that allowing the other side to air its views just muddles the debate.

Maybe it does. But what it also does is allow liberals and moderates to be aware of conservative and Far-Right points of view, to realize only too well that people in this country have different ways of thinking.

Let’s put it another way. If Romney had won, would so many liberals have been gobsmacked? I doubt it. While we liberals were hopeful and optimistic, most of us did not take this election for granted.

Yesterday, while I was raking, a neighbor who was walking her dog stopped by for a chat while the dogs romped in the backyard. We talked about the election, and she told me that before the election, she had visited an elderly aunt, conservative but beloved. (My neighbor is a moderate Democrat.) My neighbor’s parents had recently died, and the aunt asked, “Will you have to pay a death tax?”

“No,” my neighbor replied. “That’s only for estates over a million dollars. My parents left some money, but nowhere near that much.”

The aunt was silent for a while. “Are you sure?”

Yes, my neighbor assured her aunt, she was sure.

And where does that aunt get her news? Why, from Fox, of course.

Maybe it’s time for the Far Right to start getting their news from NPR and PBS.

Election day is nearly upon us, and there are matters big and small to vote on. At the national level, of course, is the presidential race, with the major candidates being Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Then there is the state level, with Angus King, an independent, running to take Olympia Snowe’s senate seat, and it’s my guess that he will get it. We also have a gay marriage referendum question, and it seems as though it will pass, making Maine the first state to do so by popular vote. On the town level, we have Farmer Craig Hickman hoping to be elected as a state representative, and he is running against one of my neighbors, Scott Davis. We have an exciting library trustee election, where two excellent write-in candidates—Pearl Ames and Maureen Whitestone—are competing for one seat.

No two ways about it, tomorrow is an important day for our country, our state, our town. I will be going to the polls to vote, as I always do. No absentee ballot for me. I like going to the town hall, where the elections are held, and seeing people I know working at the polls. I like going into one of the booths with the striped curtains. In cocooned privacy, I like carefully marking my ballot. Sometimes, in the booth next to me, a child is lolling on the floor by a parent’s feet, and that young child is getting a lesson in civic duty. Then, I like going to the machines, which suck up my ballots, different machines for different ballots, and usually I know the people who are tending the machines. And then, good citizen that I am, I get a sticker for my coat. I voted, the sticker proclaims. Yes, I did.

I don’t often overtly discuss politics on this blog, which is primarily about food and community, but the day before the election seems like a good day to do so. It will perhaps come as no surprise that I will be casting my ballot for Barack Obama. We have many challenges as a country and a planet—climate change, peak oil, and a growing population that threatens to reach 9 billion by 2050. In the rich countries, especially in the U.S., our levels of consumption are out of control. Yet, ironically, more and more people struggle to maintain a comfortable lifestyle as the gap widens between the very wealthy and the rest of us. I could go on and on, but I won’t.

The point is, we need to work together as a country to address these problems, and when I write “we,” I mean individuals and government. Together. Not each person struggling on his or her own with a callous government looking away as people suffer. With his words and actions President Obama understands this, and the federal response to Hurricane Sandy beautifully illustrates his philosophy. Right from the start, the national guard was there when people needed help. Water and supplies were delivered, and there has been nothing like the horror of Katrina, were people were left in squalor, deserted by a government that had a disdain for helping people who were not wealthy campaign donors.

Barack Obama, for all his faults—he is nowhere near as progressive as I would like—grasps that we are all in this together. He knows that the best societies are those where the government pitches in to generously help people when times are hard—as they have after hurricane Sandy—or with matters that are too big for individuals to tackle on their own, matters such as health care, climate change, and education.

I fear a United States that doesn’t come together to address important issues, to look after all its citizens—the weak and the middle class as well as the strong and the rich. I see countries where this is the norm, and the results are not pretty. Countries such as Somalia, Sudan, even India, which is a democracy. Societies where people scrabble furiously just to stay alive. Then I look to the Scandinavian countries, with their generous social policies, where the mission is to ensure that all people have a decent life. And it shows. The Scandinavian countries are productive and forward thinking, leaders not only in literacy but also in green energy. They are not perfect, but I do believe that right now, they are as good as it gets.

Really the choice couldn’t be clearer. Why is that so many people don’t see this? It will always be a mystery to me, and I can only hope that those of us who perceive that we have to work together—together!—to make the country, this planet, a decent place to live—will prevail tomorrow.

Fall is here, and today the sky is so achingly blue that all I want to do is sit on my patio and stare upwards. Naturally, busy homemaker and writer that I am, I have far too many chores to sit on the patio for very long. But what beauty! To add to this, the leaves are just beginning to change, and the trees, tinged with orange and red, are coming into their glory. The apples, squash, and pumpkins are ready to be harvested and made into crisps and pies and soup. Then there is the blaze of fall flowers—the mums—that mimic the leaves. Let’s just say that September is one fine month in Maine.

Yet September also has a bittersweet quality. The hummingbirds have left on their long migration, and although we can still hear loons calling, especially at night as we sit around the fire, soon the loons will be gone, too. My husband, Clif, and I like to ride our bikes every night—weather permitting—and this will also be becoming to an end as the weather gets chillier and night comes earlier. But for the short term, we both bundle up and go out as soon as he gets home from work. We have lights on our bikes, both front and back, and now we must use them for the last bit of our bike ride down the dark Narrows Pond Road to our home.

We live in a small town, and although we are not the only bikers—and definitely not the fastest—we are certainly dedicated, using our bikes for transportation as well as for pleasure and exercise. Even when I have use of the car, I often bike to meetings and events in town, which is only a mile away. Good for the environment, good for the body, and also, I like to believe, a good example. I want people to see me on my bike, going to the library, to the Flaky Tart, to Becky’s Second Time Around. I want them to think, “Wow, look at that one. She’s no spring chicken, but she sure can bike.” Our town is small enough so that people know me and notice me, and I hope eventually some of them might even say, “If she can do it, then so can I.”

On a personal level, biking is so good for a person that it really is a shame we are not more of a biking country. We are way behind northern Europe when it comes to bike lanes, bike racks, and other bike-friendly infrastructure that really makes a difference. Cars are our primary mode of transportation, and, as an incredibly obese nation, it shows. We drive, drive, drive everywhere, collectively putting on more weight with each passing year. And it’s not bad enough that adults are more obese than ever—our children are also more obese than they ever have been. After all, why not? Children emulate adults, and what do many adults do? Drive everywhere and sit on their backsides during their free time.

Now, exercise is not a panacea. People who are fit can still get sick, but the quality of life is striking when you compare those who are in shape with those who are not. I see it in my own husband, who will soon be 61 and can bike 30 miles without feeling as though he is going to drop the next day. On a recent check-up, Clif’s found out that he had lost seven pounds, his blood sugar had dropped, and so had his cholesterol.

“Exercise and diet really matter,” his doctor said.

Yes, they do, and to go along with the exercise, my husband and I eat really well, too. We have treats, but we have them in moderation, and much of our diet is organic and plant-based. Again, no panacea, but certainly a great help.

As my friend Kate has put it, “We must do what we can.”

I couldn’t agree more.