CHASING DOWN THE MUSE: Restless like the autumn leaves

Pace. Stomp. Read. Toss.

Pace. Stomp. Roam from room to room.

Clean. Push. Dump. Dream.

That’s it! Dream. Waking dreaming — dreaming waking. Longing and wanting. What is this odd energy coursing in my blood?

Maybe, I’m actually some strange bird, going through a period of what ornithologists call “migratory restlessness.”

I’m searching for my wings among the secreted treasures in my household. I feel the change in the sunlight; the days shortening. The weather causes me to eat more and I move about like I’m gathering for the coming cold season. I sense I’m waiting for a particular sign — some signal — to take off, to migrate.

Maybe like a crane, some grand long distance. But definitely, toward warmth.

Is this restlessness some ancient DNA, dormant, and then triggered. But by what?

The hunger and desire surprise me. Having survived the onslaught of summer, I expect to feel relief.

I can park my car near anywhere. Restaurant tables can be had on a whim. Driving in and out of town is no longer an ordeal for which one must be steeled. The weekday beach has been returned to the local population. Even the dogs have regained full daylight hours on the sand.

In the neighborhood, the change is clear. I don’t need a clock to tell me it’s 7:30 a.m. That’s when Wendt Terrace becomes a freeway alternative to the clutter of Park Avenue and the start of each school day.

Scents of baking bread waft through the air, mingled with simmering chili and stews cooking on stovetops.

My mind thinks of plaids and dirndls. A flashed memory of saddle shoes. I’m eight years old and on the school bus to El Morro Elementary.

Leaves drop from trees. Their orange, red, and yellow carcasses litter the ground.

Cool breezes shift the night temperatures to one of blankets and down. Soon, flops will need socks, and short-clad legs, a pair of sweats.

Sue Grafton writes, “I’ve never known anyone yet who doesn’t suffer a certain restlessness when autumn rolls around... We’re all eight years old again and anything is possible. “

Maybe it’s that. The child in me, clamoring to do all the things I’ve not yet done. Taste all that is yet to be tasted. Run freely down the water’s edge and leap into piles of raked leaves.

There’s no real sense to any of this. Just an inner thunking disturbing the normal flow.

Work is work. We do it. It gets done and we go on to do more work.

But the fantasy of flight is ever-present. I gather advertisements for Tahiti, Panama, the Seychelles Islands. I ponder deserts — Marrakech and Dubai.

You’d think, living in a beach resort, I’d be burnt out on waterfront. But I rarely venture to the beach in the summer. I’m just funky on crowds.

Something in me says, “Try this.” “Learn that.” I sign up for SCUBA classes and bubble my way down and around a pool. I cover my body in neoprene and look more like a sub-species of seal than the elegant crane.

Do seals migrate? I ask myself, but I already know the answer.

Edwin Way Teale writes, “Change is a measure of time and, in the autumn, time seems speeded up. What was is not and never again will be; what is, is change.”

Is that it? Am I chasing life in the same fashion that I chase the muse?

Autumn means that the end of the year is nearer than its beginning. That the calendar has piled on another stack of days and maybe I haven’t marked off as many of the “do this year” items as I had projected.

I know this feeling will pass. That the leaves will bare their branches and the winter winds will scour the skies into crystal palettes of blue. Wanderlust will be replaced by the fallow contemplative period of winter, with cups of hot cocoa and woolen sweaters.

But this week .. this month .. anything is game.

CATHARINE COOPER loves adventure. She can be reached at cooper@catharinecooper.com