The last day of official summer, and our skies finally hint at both seasons on either side of the equinoctial line. Oh, the southern sky remains trapped in a dirty yellow haze and the western horizon is still the color and texture of slate, but there is blue overhead, and actual white clouds banding to the north.
In fact, it’s a day very nearly the literal inverse of the photo above, one Wings captured on a September’s day some five or six years ago: facing south instead of north, clouds presiding over day’s end rather than its birth.
I have always loved this image for its seemingly perfect capturing of time and place, day and season. Even the dying of the giant sunflower is beautiful.
It had, of course, to live before it could die, or, more accurately, to go dormant for another year. But this year, none of the giants flowered, and their young siblings newly-planted never emerged from the dry and frozen earth. Climate change is no longer merely “affecting” our world. It is here, full force, and transformations are well under way, offering few real clues to what shape our world of the very near future will take.
For the moment, at least, we know that it retains the wild sunflowers, if not the domestic giants, and if in far smaller numbers than recent years have granted us. Some of their stands, too, are “dying” already, fading and falling and folding in upon themselves, but other are thriving, petals opened wide and turning to catch the color of the sun.
These are days when death is necessarily much on all our minds, not merely the small dying of the green as the earth prepares for her winter’s rest — that season when, despite the world’s propensity to credit spring with it, the real renewal and rebirth begin — but also the very real death that stalks our communities outside our doors. It’s easy to say that our ways understand life as a hoop, and that what we call death is no end, but in the face of such losses as our peoples have been seeing these past six months and more, such knowledge does little to mend the holes and fill the voids left in families and communities.
And with the turn of the seasons, that sense of urgency, that time is running out, is only heightened now.
We have to remind ourselves each day to stop and look around us at the beauty of the land: at such blue as escapes from the pall of smoke that has settled over us these many weeks, at the remnant green still present on the aspens, at the gold of elm and cottonwood chamisa turning or already turned, and of the wild sunflowers whose stalks are adance with the weight of the small migratory birds in residence now.
And, on this day, the coalescing of those early bands of clouds, now a high gray wall above the peaks that somewhere holds the gift of the rain. For the first time in days, perhaps weeks, the midday forecast has exceeded a five percent chance of precipitation. No, fifteen percent still isn’t much, but it holds out the possibility, and for now, that is enough.
We are entering our favorite season now, formally, although in truth we have been in it for some time already. Once, that meant clear skies and cooler temperatures, an earth aflame with leaves and light, the faint scent of winter borne upon the blade-edge of the wind. Now? Some of the trees have already turned; others will never get the opportunity. Increasingly, we are denied the fiery beauty of fall, as drought sucks the life from the land before it has a chance to dance.
And this year, there will be no feast day, either, no song and dance and drum to mark the turning of the seasons or such small harvest as current conditions have granted. Such are the wages of colonialism: pandemic, illness, isolation, death, and so we forego our usual markers for the more important task of ensuring survival.
But still, this earth will have its own celebrations. They are in their early stages now: the first gold leaves, tinged here and there with red; flashes of blue from the scrub jays, yellow from the few warblers that remain, crimson patches on the flickers and the newest woodpecker pair. Now, the clouds climb higher to the east, and a new plume of white has begun to unfurl above a violet bank to the west. It would be a remarkable gift if the last day of summer should be marked by a summer’s rain, a few drops for the sunflowers dancing thirsty now. The absence of human markers have no bearing on the earth’s celebration, nor its ceremony.
It is, after all, summer’s last dance.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
