The first official day of autumn, and already there is an eerie, haunted quality to our world. It’s neither sunny nor cloudy, but somewhere in between; neither warm nor cold, but a state of affairs that changes with every passing cloud or ray of reemergent sun.
There is a feeling of bated breath about this day, a sense of an Earth in waiting.
Saturday night — or, more accurately, the early hours of yesterday morning — saw the mercury plunge into the thirties for the first time this season. There is no snow today, of course, not even rain in the forecast — and yet, the weather service’s own radar map shows a massive storm system to south and west, seemingly headed straight for us. Should we get rain tonight, it’s no stretch to predict that the aspens will dusted with white tomorrow . . . nor, should it come to pass, that what remains of the green will give way almost entirely to gold before week’s end.
New season (in astronomical terms; in meteorological terms, fall’s been with us a while); new moon on the horizon; new month in just over a week. The village is counting down the days to the big feast, and with it, making mental calculations about winter’s arrival.
Like everyone else here, we have been stockpiling firewood; it’s been cold enough since late August to require a fire in the woodstove mot mornings, and plenty of the evenings, too. Wings is hard at work outdoors these days, weatherizing and winterizing for the animals (work I used to do with him until my health confined me to lesser labor, mostly indoors). The wild birds are busy, too, some stocking up for the long migration to come, others for riding out the deep cold with us here. And at times like this, everyone works, and nothing goes to waste.
The pine siskins, resting a moment on the slow-spangled aspens branches above, spend most of their days in the embankment on the west side, raiding every wild sunflower stalk for every available seed. I watched a raven fly overhead a few days ago with some hapless small creature clamped firmly in its beak. The raptors have returned, already on the hunt. And just outside the window, just this moment, an errant dragonfly darted back and forth, looking for water no longer here or the road to warmer winds. Even the dogs have begun digging up the bones they buried in summer, already aware that they need extra fuel (and perhaps that when the snow finally does fly, it may put them entirely out of reach).
And now, in these last few moments, it’s finally possible to determine what sort of day this will be. The clouds have moved in overhead, turning the space between earth and sky a pale dove gray; a much larger, darker bank is amassing to the west. The mercury will likely hover between cool and cold now. And it appears that the storm may soon be upon us.
But for now, along with our whole small world here, we work, and we wait.
~ Aji
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