Turning of Seasons - September 14, 2018 Journal Entry

Nature Journal September 14, 2018

Everything’s turning yellow - the edges of the Ginkgo, the soybean field, the goldenrod out in the meadow and the mums on porch stoops.  Queen Anne’s Lace is curled up like a hard fist shaking it at the waning sun.  Monarchs are taking their last grand flights and flocks of birds are being shaken out like a coverlet arranged over a bed to be made ready for the sleep of Summer.  Things are getting tidied up for the coming Winter.  As are my thoughts.  

Everything is mature.  It’s not in a hurry like the youth of Spring; it knows too much now.  It’s Been, and it’s Going - there’s a fullness - a different kind of glory reserved before exits.  The moments don’t last long - even the song of the crickets, that seem a constant thing - but it, too, will not last the Autumn.  Winter is coming.  A new cover will arrive and things will hush and quiet, and we can explore our haunts deep in the woods again.  Finally, the Poison Ivy will let down its arms and insistence upon secret passwords we don’t know, and frustrations will fall away, and sighs of solitude and a cleanness and freshness will come back, familiar.  And people will rush indoors so we can rush out, like warm and cold air trading places and pushing past one another to their preferred places.  It works out for me.  For us.  The busy and the frantic give way to rest and peace and new life that isn’t noticed or that doesn’t exist in warmer months.  Maybe I don’t either.  There is a quickening attached to each season, along with a sort of shedding.  

This morning I invited P to take a walk with me after a lot of backscratch-rubbing and a token of chocolate milk on his bed, an offering to invoke him to a better mood, out of the mental slough into which he’d hurled himself.  The fog subsided along with his sobs and he put on his shoes and anticipation.  We pushed L to the edge of the woods and gathered the cleanest reddish maple leaves we could find for her to twirl and practice observation while we crouched low to appreciate little intricate webs interlaced among bottoms of clover patches with dew droplets clinging for our delight.  "They look like sugar!" P said in holy awe.  "Like frosting," I said, thinking of B’s castle cake I would be making later.  L was happy.  P’s wide smile had returned.  And so had my hope.  It comes and goes like the dew.  Not really explainable but reliably consistent.  Sometimes I just need to go outside and look for it.  I will always find it if I go, because hope doesn’t disappoint.  I do.  

Sometimes, I feel like everything’s going to be ok...

- September 14, 2018