Beside the Fire

photo by Josh Scholten

I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair

I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see

For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green

I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know

But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door
— J.R.R. Tolkien

 

A Bumbling Intricacy

photo by Josh Scholten

Here is a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world…: the way we the living are nibbled and nibbling — not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land.
Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The weather is getting brisker so the outdoor critters, some invited, some not,  are starting to move inside.  The cats scoot between our legs as we open the front door, heading straight for the fireplace to bask in the warmth rather than a cold wind.  The puppy comes in from the yard for his nightly snack and chew bone, and stretches out on the rug, acting every bit like a piece of furry furniture.  And today there was another mouse in the trap under the sink.  I almost thought we were mouse-free with three weeks of none sighted and none trapped, but there he was waiting for me when I got home from work, well fed and quite dead.  He became an opportune meal for a cat too lazy to go get himself a living breathing mouse.  From nibbling to nibbled.  It is a tough world, inside and out.

Our most numerous and ambitious visitors from outside are the spiders, appearing miraculously crawling futilely up the sides in the bathtub, or scurrying across the kitchen floor, or webbing themselves into a corner of the ceiling with little hope of catching anything but a stray house moth or two this time of year.   Arachnids are certainly determined yet stationary predators, rebuilding their sticky traps as needed to ensure their victims won’t rip away, thereby destroying the web.

I don’t really mind sharing living quarters with another of God’s creatures, but I do prefer the ones that are officially invited into our space and not surprise guests.  The rest are interlopers that I tolerate with grudging admiration for their instinctive ingenuity.  I admit I’m much too inept and bumbling to find my way into someone else’s house through a barely perceptible crack, and I’m certainly incapable of weaving the intricate beauty of a symmetrical web placed just so in a high corner.

After all, I am just another creature in the same boat.  There is something quite humbling about being actually invited into this complex and broken world, “pitted and scarred” as I am.    I’m grateful I’ve so far escaped capture in the various insidious traps of life,  not just the spring-loaded kind and the sticky filament kind.

So it is okay that I’m settled in, cozy in front of the fireplace, just a piece of the furniture.  Just so long as I don’t startle anyone or nibble too much of what I shouldn’t, I just might be invited to stay awhile.

photo by Josh Scholten

Companions in Adversity

photo by Josh Scholten

photo by Josh Scholten

When shrieked
The bleak November winds, and smote the woods,
And the brown fields were herbless, and the shades
That met above the merry rivulets
Were spoiled, I sought, I loved them still; they seemed
Like old companions in adversity.
~William Cullen Bryant  in A Winter Piece

When the winds start to howl
and leaves are flying through the air
like birds on the wing heading south,
when branches snap
and trunks bend to the point of breaking
when the ground is hopelessly barren
and the hills are nothing
but continuing shades of gray
descending from the sky
when the sun disappears for days
and the rains are continuous

I love it all still;

knowing we are in this together
when the times are tough and
the mud is thick
and obstacles fall in our way
even to the end of time
as we travel this road
like old companions
broken, withered, splintered
but sharing the journey
wherever it blows us.

photo by Josh Scholten

photo by Josh Scholten

BriarCroft in Autumn

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
- Emily Dickinson

“Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Bare are the places where the sweet flowers dwelt.
What joy sufficient hath November felt?
What profit from the violet’s day of pain?
- Helen Hunt Jackson, Autumn Sonnet “O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being.
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead,
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.”
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

“How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.

At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.

Till all the trees stand stark and bare.

Exhausted, drop to earth below

To wait, like children, for the snow.”

 -   Elsie N. Brady, Leaves

“I saw the lovely arch
Of rainbow span the sky,
The gold sun burning
As the rain swept by.”
- Elizabeth Coatsworth, November

“Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem:
There’s not a leaf that falls upon the ground
But holds some joy of silence or of sound
Some spirits begotten of a summer dream.”
- Laman Blanchard

“The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day;
The flying birds in flocks return.
In these things there lies a deep meaning;
I want to tell it, but have forgotten the words.”
- Tao Yuan Ming

“A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn.  The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains – a melancholy nature.  The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief.  Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.”
- Henri Frederic Amiel

“Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn.”
- Elizabeth Lawrence

BriarCroft in Spring

BriarCroft in Summer

BriarCroft in Winter

BriarCroft at Year’s End

Leafy Ghosts

photo by Josh Scholten

The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The ghosts of her
Departed leaves…

And yet the world,
In its distress,
Displays a certain
Loveliness.
~John Updike

The maple’s leaves have let go
in the winds and rain
in a bid for freedom,
swirling to new adventure
and ending in
soft landing
one atop another.

There they lay
in leafy graveyard
among others
seeking release
from branching bondage,
each shaped differently
in designed diversity.

The collected pile slowly
assimilates in color and wilt.
Once distinctive foliage,
so green and grand,
from oak, chestnut,
walnut,  birch
and maple settle in
together at last.

In death
mirroring each other
just as birthing leaf buds
appeared indistinguishable
a mere eight months ago.

My eye now only sees
a mosaic carpet of jumbled
ghostly remnants,
dressing the ground
as they once adorned branches.
No longer do they
lift and dance in the breeze,
no more chemical exchange
of sunlight for fuel.

Distressed and done,
fallen and sodden,
each one lies
alone
together,
a chlorophyll coda
of lost loveliness.

A Heaven of Impermanence

photo by Josh Scholten

My friend, you have led me farther than I have ever been.
To a garden in autumn. To a heaven of impermanence
where the final falling off is slow, a slow and radiant happening.
The light is gold. And while we’re here, I think it must
    be heaven.
~Elizabeth Spires from “In Heaven it is Always Autumn”

I wander the autumn garden mystified at the passing of the weeks since seed was first sown, weeds pulled, peapods picked.  It could not possibly be done so soon–this patch of productivity and beauty, now wilted and brown, vines crushed to the ground, no longer fruitful.

The root cellar is filling up, the freezer packed.  The work of putting away is almost done.

So why do I go back to the now barren soil I so carefully worked, numb in the knowledge I will pick no more this season, feel the burst of a cherry tomato exploding in my mouth or the green freshness of a bean straight off the vine?

Because for a few fertile weeks, only a few weeks, the garden was a bit of heaven on earth, impermanent but a real taste nonetheless.   We may have mistaken Him for the gardener when He appeared to us radiant, suddenly unfamiliar, but He offered the care of the garden, to bring in the sheaves, to share the forever mercies in the form of daily bread grown right here and now.

When He says my name, then I will know Him.  He will lead me farther than I have ever been.

photo by Josh Scholten

…in heaven it is always autumn, his mercies are ever in their maturity.  God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon,  to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest…
~John Donne in Christmas Day Sermon 1624

Changing Clothes

photo by Josh Scholten

The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.
Henry Beston

The change of seasons this week offered no gradual transition to ease us gently into autumn– three months of daily sun and balmy temperatures became gray, rainy, windy, stormy cuddle-down cold overnight.   It is a terrible shock to our physiology as well as our wardrobe.  Sweaters and jackets that have not seen the light of day for months are suddenly front and center in the closet.  Sandals are shoved way to the back once again.  Only last week I was still sneaking out to the barn to do morning chores in my pajamas and slippers but now am trussed up in my Carhartts, gloves and muck boots.

Tough as it is reconcile to shorter days and chilly temperatures, I do appreciate the absolute drama of it all.  Golden leaves dance up and down in the gusts, as if searching for the exactly perfect landing and forever resting spot.  The fallen walnuts inside their round green husks are scattered everywhere underfoot well hidden among the leaves, making navigating are yard’s pathways hazardous, especially in the dark.  I’ve never been good at walking on marbles and these are ping pong ball size marbles.

So all bundled up I pick my way carefully to the barn, wanting not to be embarrassed by falling flat on my face and or by watching trees stripped naked right before my eyes.   As they unceremoniously shed their leafy coats to reveal their skinny skeletons, I’m piling on layers on over my…. layers.

I’m treading on their sacred leavings, much like inadvertently walking across poorly marked graves at a cemetery.   It is truly holy ground.

photo by Josh Scholten

The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn

~John Muir

Shake Me Like a Cry

The scarlet of maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
to see the frosty asters like smoke
upon the hills.
~ William Bliss Carman

It is like the blowing of taps, this last blast of color before the rains and winter.  There is quickened heartbeat and choking back tears at seeing the vividness outlined by robins egg-blue sky, each maple a torch aflame about to burn down to ash and smoke.

The bright palette is too much to take in all at once.  If only it could spread out through the year and not last only for a week or two when I’m relegated indoors in long work hours and weekend harvest preservation of fruits and vegetables.  I so wish to be two places at once, to be two people, to be more than I am.

So I must harvest autumn in words and pictures, just like preserving the garden and orchard in jars and bags, someday to refresh and restore when gray pervades and mildew threatens to overpower, when hunger for fall shakes me wholly, like a sob.

Like a cry for how it used to be and how it one day will be again.

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

All Flesh

All flesh is grass.
Isaiah 40:6

photo by Josh Scholten

The moment one gives close attention to anything,
even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome,
indescribably magnificent world in itself.
– Henry Miller

With the light and warmth waning with autumn’s approach, we have likely mowed for the last time this season. The explosion of green in May has become the browning crisp of September. Our work may be on hiatus, but the grasses only appear to be resting.

Growth has gone to seed. The seed itself is gone as well: blowing in a gusty breeze, or attaching to a passing tuft of fur to ride to another destination, or traversing a bird’s digestive tract to eventually land at the base of a fence post, or simply landing into nurturing soil at the feet of the mother plant. There it is invited home once again.

The season of grasses, though unbearably short, is nevertheless perpetual. Half of the year nothing appears to be happening. Still its growth continues, invisible to the eye, all nuance and planned potential. Even as the plant dies back, it persists within the ever renewing and buried seed,  guaranteed a new life and purpose in another place and season.

Surely I too am grass, withering with seed falling.  Though gone with the wind, blown by the breath of God,  within that seed, His word endures forever.

And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles…
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass

photo by Josh Scholten

First Gray Hair

photo by Josh Scholten

“The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.”
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

I remember a day before I turned 30 when a barber pulled a gray hair from my head and handed it to me.  “Here you go, ” she said,  “this is only the beginning.”

Indeed.  My mother was totally gray by 32 and my hope was to hold onto my light brown hair until at least 50.

It didn’t seem possible I could be losing my “freshness” so young as 29, but double the years with an exponential increase in the number of gray hairs, and I must face facts.  Quite a few years ago on my 45th birthday, as I was walking down the sidewalk at work, a middle-aged woman stopped me mid-stride and asked me what brand hair coloring I used.  I was taken completely off-guard.  All I could respond was that I used no hair coloring other than what God Himself applied.  She laughed and said she would have to keep looking then, as she was hoping I could direct her to a hair color that would make her hair look like “champagne” just like mine.   I floated for three days on that thought alone.

Champagne.  So I wasn’t “one season too many” after all.  I was “well-aged.”

I sympathize with the not-so-fresh foliage on the farm in late summer. In anticipation of autumn, some of the yellow leaves simply give up and let go, flying in the wind to their final resting place, even in early September.  Others decide to hang on until the bitter end ~yellowing, goldening, reddening and browning in a shimmering kaleidoscope of exhausted pigment.

I am one of those hanging on, quaking at times in the breezes, bedraggled in the drizzle, tattered on the edges, with some age spots here and there.  I’m determined to make the best of the gray and am proud of every strand I’ve earned over the years and hope to earn a bunch more before I’m done.

After all…it isn’t really gray.  It is champagne, well aged, with bubbles sparkling in the sun.

Photos of the “gray hairs” showing up around the farm as of today