This is the most beautiful time of year in Corvallis. The beautiful greens of summer transform into all the various colors of autumn, and I long for the ability to translate the wonder and joy I feel into words. I try to resist the urge to add a chapter to A Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek.

One of the prettiest changes is quite ironic: Trees that assume the exact colors of the University of Oregon. As a former Duck, I enjoy how many of these trees there are in Corvallis. The entire town, including much of the university's campus, is filled with these trees proclaiming in green and yellow the glories of Mighty Oregon. Eventually, of course, the orange of OSU will emerge, but the accompanying black will only be found in dank, matted piles of decaying leaves. Not a pretty sight.

The most spectacular colors are the reds, the crimsons, the golds. Maples, I guess, but I know every little of tree species, only the most general types: maple, oak, pine. Is that brilliant wine-red tree across the street a maple? What color do alders become? Ash? I feel a certain responsibility to know what I am looking at, but I also know I won't learn this any time soon, so I return to my ignorant pleasure. I stand still and gave across the park to the trees lined up in rows, towering high above the houses so that they appear to be a garden of bright colors. Blocks and yards full of trees, the colors so various and spectacular, especially on a sunny afternoon. I can stand and enjoy this more than just about any tv show ("My Name is Earl" is a good laugh but not nearly as soul-satisfying).

Today the grey sky, reminding me that the long, wet winter is soon to follow, takes some of the pleasure from the viewing. The coolness of the day sends me indoors, where I can pretend not to notice the loss of my precious summer. I have spent almost five decades living in places where most of the year is cold and wet, and I'm damned tired of it. In a few years I shall run away to live somewhere I can guarantee myself that I'll be comfortably warm even in the depth of winter. This is what I dream of, and I hide from my real world gray afternoon indoors with a hot cup of tea and a computer screen.

Where I read of real real life. Thousands dead in Pakistan, a level of violence and horror I pray I'll never comprehend or experience. I look at the pictures of the rubble; later in the day, I watch the news and see men using their bare hands to remove chunks of concrete in the hope that they may save one life. I think of the number being given -- 18,000 dead, a small football stadium wiped out in minutes -- and the reality just does not register. It cannot. There is nothing I have known or experienced that makes this tragedy in the least bit real. It is sad and terrible, but I don't know how to feel that kind of sadness. I am just glad to be here and that the worst I have to deal with is rain and cold. How I love living here when I remember what others go through. I am more than lucky. I am gluttonous. I splurge daily on happiness, on a full belly and privacy and a room of my own and high speed internet and two healthy children and clean drinking water and gas I can afford and several good pairs of shoes and much, too much more. I wallow in being alive and the vast sea of mundane pleasures into which I have been cast. How good it is to live here, in Corvallis, not buried beneath mountains that fall onto my home or under waters that storms raise in anger -- but surrounded by lovely colors and small happinesses. How good it is that the worst of my complaints is a grey sky and possible rain later in the week.

And how good to know that I know this. It leaves my heart free to pray for those who lack my good luck.