🕰️ November 6 – Time’s Uneven Footsteps in Roanoke

Some mornings, the air over Mill Mountain feels like it’s holding its breath. The clock on the star says one thing, but the crows circling above the Roanoke River seem to mark another hour entirely. Down by the farmers market, the world hums in coffee sips and shoe taps – a fast, modern tempo – while in the old cemeteries up on the hill, you can almost hear the tick of moss growing over names, slower than a sigh.

Time here never runs evenly. On Brandon Avenue, it sprints – deadlines, buses, traffic lights flipping red before you’re ready. But out near the greenway, by the cattails and the ducks who couldn’t care less about minutes, it ambles. You can walk for what feels like hours and find the light hasn’t shifted an inch.

Maybe it’s the mountains. Maybe they bend the seconds, fold them like warm laundry. Or maybe Roanoke just keeps its own sort of calendar –  one where the seasons overlap, where October ghosts still wander through November fog, and where the same church bell seems to ring both too soon and not soon enough.

Tonight, the clocks will insist it’s late. But standing under the soft hum of the Star, watching the valley’s lights drift like embers, you can feel how the moment stretches – a slow, generous kind of forever.

(current mood: clocks made of fog and songbirds)