Cataract Removal

     Thursday I had cataract surgery on the left eye, the long-distance eye. Friday I had a post-op, everything-looks-good appointment. Saturday I took a walk through the forest.
    How the world has changed! I hadn't realized how restricted my world had become. Now, I peer through the trees and can see, sharply, to the vanishing point. I can see the deep clefts in fir tree bark and the tiny, shaggy shingles of madrone bark. I can see the difference in the patterns of bark on pines, firs, cedars, and oaks. I raise my eyes to the tops of white oak trees, where individual lobes of bright yellow leaves are etched onto the sky. Colors, which I had thought bright already, have deepened and glow.

    You know how images in some modern photographs are as sharp in the distance as those in the foreground? That's how it is: an unbelievable clarity, an indescribable depth in the world around me.

    I did an interview years ago with a Marshall Scholar named Geoffrey Tabin, an ophthalmologist who provides free cataract surgery in many developing countries In a video about his work, one man says he was knocked down by a cow because he couldn't see. Another says it was so hard to get to the outhouse he stopped eating. A woman hated being a burden on her daughter, who has her own children to care for. Then the operation. Then removal of the eye patch. Then amazing joy. Such dancing! Such ululation! Such smiles!

    I wasn't running into cows before my surgery, but, yeah, I know why these people were dancing.

    Next month I'll have surgery on the other eye. Then I'll be able to read without blurred vision, too.

Such joy! Such smiles! I might even ululate.

November 2024

    Tomorrow is election day. I've already turned in my ballot. (In Oregon, all ballots are mail-in.) I urge you to exercise your civic privilege and vote (unless you're a Trumper, in which case, maybe you can just forget it this time around).

    I am writing this blog post now because I don't want to face politics at the moment, as I will have to do, for one reason or another, after tomorrow. I want to write about something beautiful or fun or wonderful.

    Like this beautiful world we live in.

   In the Appalachians, where I grew up, autumnal glory is in the mass of colors, whole mountainsides vibrating with reds, yellows, oranges, purples, pinks, umbers. In the Siskiyous, the dogwoods turn pink, or, this year, a darker red. The leaves of black oaks and white oaks turn yellow.

The broad-leaf maples turn yellow. The viney maples are sometimes yellow, sometimes fiery red. The alders and willows are light yellow. The ferns are yellow-brown, and vanilla leaf is yellow-green.  

                                                                            Photo by Margaret delll Santina

    Boring? Not at all!

    In the Siskiyous we don't say, "Wow! Look at all the colors on that mountain!" We say, "Wow! Look at that spectacular tree!"

Sun-drenched maples glow bright yellow among the dark trunks of the forest,

The delicate viney maple, leaf by leaf turns red on the edges of yellow.

                                                                            Photo by Margaret delll Santina

Nowhere are our eyes so dazzled by the colored trees that we can't appreciate the subtler beauties of the autumn forest: the carpet of madrone leaves,

the sap-tipped red scales of a new sugar pine cone,

the patterns in a manzanita trunk,

the reflections of river-bank bushes in the river.

    Oh, how I have enjoyed walking in the woods this fall!

                                               Photo by Margaret delll Santina