Rain, Rain

Early autumn is a wet time of year here. Rain-heavy clouds spin out of the North, West, South, and loosen their burdens before passing on. Sometimes the sky closes and the sun disappears for weeks on end. It can be a gloomy, grim time for those still hoping to cling to a bit more summer.

But I love it. Granted, the prolonged rain can be problematic and tiresome, and I do miss the sunshine, but it is so beautiful. Colors are deep and vibrant, washed clean by the rain and unbleached by the sun. It’s cool enough for a flannel shirt in the morning, a small fire in the evening, cups of hot tea and cocoa and steaming bowls at every meal. A light but incessant breeze soughs in the trees, and I am home. These sounds, smells, colors, conditions echo in my heart and settle with the well-worn comfort of old jeans. I am home.

Rain drips from the eaves, pecks on the roof like a flock of birds. Shallow puddles bleed out from the grass, fill the tracks of the driveway, huddle in small pockets on the sidewalks. Trees and bushes swing with the breeze, dance with a gray sky. It is both bleak and beautiful. And I love it.

Photo courtesy of Harshad Sharma.

Changing Seasons

With the traditional close of summer last weekend and the official close only a week and a half away, people are starting to gear up for fall. Autumnal colors have cropped up in displays and advertisements, and Halloween accoutrement are beginning to appear in stores everywhere. Seasons are changing.

I know a lot of people are somewhat saddened by the passing of summer, especially those who have to go back to school and those who see fall as little more than a harbinger of another winter. But fall is my favorite season. It has been for as long as I can remember. Summer was always great – full of days spent in the sun and water, watching clouds and rolling in the grass – but autumn brought the year’s best weather and brightest colors. It meant going back to school and re-joining friends I had not seen all summer (and, yes, I was one of the few children who didn’t mind school). Fall also meant the sweets and candies of Halloween, the fantastic dishes of Thanksgiving (as well as the leftovers for the days that followed), and, if we were lucky, the first snow.

Now my point of view is different, but my enjoyment and excitement have hardly changed. Autumn contains the last opportunities given by the living seasons – begun in the first green shoots of spring and finished in the last colored leaves of fall. It is the last chance to get out there and shake a leg before the frosts become icicles hanging from the eaves and a howling winter wind drives us – and most other animals – inside for shelter and warmth. It is a celebration of life, of having survived thus far.

It is also a reminder that winter is just around the corner. It is a last chance to settle warm-weather affairs and prepare for the cold-weather challenges to come. It is a reminder that to all things there is a season, and that someday Death will nip us as easily as frost does flowers. It heralds an end of things, but also the hope of new beginnings, however far off they may seem. And what a way to go: all beauty and color and light before that last long darkness.

I love fall. I hope you will enjoy it as well.

Shooting the Evening

As promised, if later than I had planned, due to technical problems, a whole new post.

I’ve always enjoyed spending quiet time just soaking in a good evening. Watching a brilliant sunset, picking out the first stars, listening to the sounds of frogs, crickets, cicadas calling. My perch usually takes the shape of porch swing but I once spent a fantastic evening at a picnic table in the Midwest that rivals the best of them.

We drove miles down a dirt road to a small patch of rolling farm country and pasture land in the middle of Kansas. It had been hot that day, over 100`F, and we had covered many, many miles on a trip headed West in a car with no air conditioning. We stopped not long before sunset, seeking refuge in the shade of a group of small trees near a picnic table. A light breeze drew across the hillside and shallow valley below and I thought perhaps we had stumbled on a small piece of Heaven.

We moved the picnic table into the shade and ate a bite while birds stalked tiny prey in the grass and flew in looping patterns over the grassy field a few hundred feet away. Backlit by the sinking sun, they snapped insects out of the air and sang their successes. The tall grass below them and the bugs they sought burned golden in the sunset light, gilded brightly against a dark line of trees bounding the far side of the field. The breeze was cool, the air dry, and we sat in perfect comfort watching the show.

Just up the road, an old windmill creaked and bumped through its slow and deliberate revolutions. Cattle grazed in the surrounding pasture. From time to time they bawled and lowed and wandered to the tank below the windmill for a drink of water, water delivered from somewhere underground to a quiet Kansas pasture by workings that had weathered there for more years than I and my traveling companion had been alive. Its steady sound was as natural as a creek gurgling over cobbles. I found it unspeakably comforting.

As evening drew the shades and the birds and bugs found their homes for the night, we sat reversed on the seats, our backs propped against the tabletop, and trained our eyes farther upward. Constellations materialized in the clear evening sky. Bugs called in a low chorus from the grass and trees. The windmill creaked reassuringly. And we stayed up until after midnight talking about the world, our lives, and counting shooting stars.

We left early the next morning, dawn still caught in the dewey grasses. We had miles to turn. But I left a piece of my heart on that hillside, and I took a piece of Kansas with me when we went.

It’s the reason I love to travel. It’s a cornerstone of the hope I hold for myself and this world. It’s something pure and simple and beautiful, and I saw it. I didn’t just look at it with open eyes, I saw it. And every time I see a place, a person, an object, I am forever changed … usually for the better.

Technicolor Life

My favorite color is blue. It has been for many many years. But I find that the older I get, the harder it is to pick just one; all colors are beautiful. I never liked chartreuse until I noticed that sunlight in fresh spring grass carried that color. Gray never seemed exciting until I saw it churning in the sky and ocean after a storm. I was never very fond of pink until those tiny, delicate crocuses bloomed in front of the house, and the rose bush shed great handfuls of bright pink petals on the sidewalk.

Somewhere, everything is beautiful. Maybe not in the same place or at the same time as anything else, but every thing has its own beauty. I may not enjoy a wine-colored shirt, but wine-colored autumn leaves or wine edging on green ivy is a different story.

Years ago a close friend and published poet urged me to write a poem about color (I fancied I had a bit of talent back then). There were rules, of course, to make the process more interesting, including that the entire poem could contain only one basic color and anything mentioned must pertain to it. To really challenge myself (cocky as I was) I chose what I thought was the most boring color in the crayon box (brown) and spent several days refining my little creative attempt. The results were hardly better than mediocre but it changed my perspective completely. In looking for “brown” things worth writing about, I found unexpected beauty everywhere.

I’ve never stopped looking for similar unexpected beauties, and have never stopped finding them.