"East of August"

Peekskill Regeneration Farm: The cucumbers east of August—still green, still dreaming. The blossom remembers rain, the fruit remembers heat.

The hurricane, Erin, curled northward along the Atlantic, brushing the East Coast with cooler breath—its arrival a quiet undoing of the heat that had pressed against us for days. The rain, gentle and insistent, coaxed yellow cucumber blossoms into fruit overnight. I watched them swell in silence, their transformation a kind of private miracle. On the family farm, such growth was slower, more deliberate. But here, in this liminal space between storm and stillness, the cucumbers seem to leap into being.

This morning, while walking and photographing the river’s edge, I picked one. It was small, firm, and fragrant—its skin still damp from the night’s rain. I ate it by the water, where the wind was soft and a sailboat drifted without urgency. The cucumber tasted like memory, but brighter. More immediate. As if it had skipped the long arc of cultivation and arrived fully formed, ready to be consumed.

With less than two weeks of August left, I’ve returned to my books. September waits like a threshold, and I read daily to prepare for its crossing. Steinbeck’s East of Eden sits beside me again, a companion I’ve never truly put down. Cathy Ames—Kate Trask—remains one of literature’s most haunting antagonists. Her cruelty is not cartoonish, but calculated. She is a cipher of destruction, born on a Connecticut farm and shaped by shadows.

Her story unfolds like a fever dream:

• A childhood marked by manipulation and violence.
• A teacher’s suicide, a suspicious fire, a disappearance.
• Seduction, betrayal, and a marriage built on illusion.
• Twin sons born into a legacy of secrets.
• A brothel inherited through poison, transformed into something colder than commerce.

Cathy’s descent is relentless, but Steinbeck never flinches. He lets her live, lets her shape the lives around her, lets her meet her son Cal—who carries her darkness like a birthright. Aron, the favored child, is shattered by the truth. And Adam, the father, remains suspended in grief and denial.

In a Salinas brothel, a bitter and furious Cal reveals to Aron, the favored son, that their mother (Cathy/Kate), whom Adam Trask had claimed was dead and in Heaven, is actually alive.

​Today’s blog may not be spectacular, but it holds something quiet and true. A cucumber by the river. A hurricane’s breath. A woman named Cathy who refuses redemption. And me, reading again, waiting for September.