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Ray Stubblefield

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From the RoundTable blog

October has to be my favorite month. Even though we can still get a few warm spells, you know summer has definitely packed it in for another year. But it's not just the cooler temperatures that make it so pleasant; it's the lower humidity.

The humidity makes all the difference, and you don't really understand that until you experience it firsthand. I think it's bad here in Virginia, but then when I visited my sister one July in New Orleans (this was pre-Katrina), I gained a new appreciation for Virginia humidity.

Then I have friends who have been to the Philippines, and they tell me it increases yet again to another level of discomfort that has to be experienced to be believed. But it's lower humidity that I like in the summer, and you've got to head West for that.

Years ago I lived on the Blackfoot River in western Montana, and it was there I experienced summer without humidity. I thought I was in heaven. It can get into the 90s some days, but with the altitude and low humidity, as soon as the sun goes down, the temperatures drop into the 40s, and you are grabbing for the blankets and closing the windows.

October days here often remind me of Montana summer days, deep blue skies and low humidity. All summer long I felt like a prisoner to the AC, going out only when it was absolutely necessary. Then with the first cold front in early October, I got paroled on good behavior. So I've been going kind of nuts with all sorts of activity, celebrating the best of months, my month.

A few weekends ago, my friend Jim and I rendezvoused down in Tennessee to hike across Hump Mountain. The weather was absolutely perfect. Not a cloud to be found and hardly a breeze all weekend. It was dry, though. Water was scarce. The leaves were already changing and the grass was brown from lack of rain and early hard freezes.

This 13-mile section of the Appalachian Trail traverses high-altitude balds. These open, expansive grasslands that inhabit 5,000 foot ridge tops are rare in the Appalachians, just about as rare as good weather. They look a lot like the highlands of Ireland or Scotland.

I've been across this section when the clouds were so thick and it rained so hard, I could barely follow the trail. And wind; you think you're going to get blown off the mountain. But on this weekend the weather was kind and gentle, and you could see forever.

Armed with digital cameras, we took a zillion pictures, and not a bad one in the bunch. Just for reference, Grandfather Mountain is a few ridges over.

The following weekend I had visitors from West Virginia. Another Jim, but this Jim is the one I ski with at Snowshoe. We both have been doing courtesy patrol there for about six years now, and that's where we met.

I'd told him about our log home that we designed and built ourselves, and finally last weekend he and his wife came to see it in person. On Saturday afternoon we headed up to the parkway. The leaves were changing, pumpkins, apples and honey were for sale at roadside stands, and skies were warm, clear and blue. Another perfect fall day.

Our friend Ginny teaches nursing at Radford and does ski patrol at Snowshoe as well, and she was having a big bash on her farm near the parkway for all her friends from church and work. It was great.

And then, almost as a spur-of-the-moment thing, our house became Grand Central Station with my wife's family visiting. Her son Josh was home. He guides backpacking and kayaking trips in the Peruvian Andes, (rough life, I know) and was home for a few weeks after being away for nearly a year.

So sister No. 1 drove down with her kids from Pennsylvania. Her older daughter was flying back East from Seattle, and decided to drop in too. Then sister No. 2 couldn't miss out on all this excitement, so she flew in from Kansas with her kids. Before it was over, we had 13 people sleeping under one roof and breaking bread together. And it wasn't even a holiday. Of all the times for the water heater to go out.

The cousins played board games, watched DVDs, surfed the Net and devoured tons of groceries. Some of them also rode horses and went to a local farm to wander around their corn maze. Too bad they couldn't stay and trick or treat.

Isn't October a great month?

Stubblefield, who teaches earth science at Franklin County High School, is a Roanoke Times columnist.