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Last night, at about ten, we left the coffee shop and stepped out into dog days--well, nights--of August. It was awful, humidity like Houston.
An hour later an errant lightning bolt felt as if it smacked a tree in our backyard, so close it crackled before it slammed into my eardrums. We got up to check, but saw nothing. Rain came in buckets, as it has all summer long.
But today is the autumnal equinox, the herald of the end, summer's dog days supposedly behind us. We're at that point in the year when it feels like joy to get rid of summer and cicadas and a thousand other creepy crawlers, not to mention the blasted pollen (he says, reaching for the Kleenex).
"Feels like" because a nasty, still small voice is whispering the real truth. Summer's end means that out there somewhere north by northwest, winter is getting his lungs tuned for beastly days to come. There are places here in the grasslands where long lines of stones and rocks point exactly to the position of the sun rise today, primitive clocks that once upon a time reminded Native people to think about taking cover, literally, even though they too already knew, I'm sure.
I don't know--right now it feels like a joy, even though I know it's a mixed blessing and the interim, fall, is almost always a sweet segue way.
Whether we like it or not, it's here. Our crab trees are already mostly shorn, and the lawn's bedecked with the scattered early refuse of the maples and the lindens. Our own warm quilt got outed from the closet last week already. In little more than ten days, the whole Siouxland region turned yellow. Beans shrunk, corn wilted. What was emerald is now golden, almost cartoonish, really, an amazing and thorough transformation. We're in a different world.
The signs are all in place. This morning, the sun points toward winter. It's coming, like it or not.
I'm happy. Sort of.
This morning I'm thankful for the change of seasons, really. But then, I'm fickle as the Israelites. I'm sure I'll be even more thankful on the other side, come June.
An hour later an errant lightning bolt felt as if it smacked a tree in our backyard, so close it crackled before it slammed into my eardrums. We got up to check, but saw nothing. Rain came in buckets, as it has all summer long.
But today is the autumnal equinox, the herald of the end, summer's dog days supposedly behind us. We're at that point in the year when it feels like joy to get rid of summer and cicadas and a thousand other creepy crawlers, not to mention the blasted pollen (he says, reaching for the Kleenex).
"Feels like" because a nasty, still small voice is whispering the real truth. Summer's end means that out there somewhere north by northwest, winter is getting his lungs tuned for beastly days to come. There are places here in the grasslands where long lines of stones and rocks point exactly to the position of the sun rise today, primitive clocks that once upon a time reminded Native people to think about taking cover, literally, even though they too already knew, I'm sure.
I don't know--right now it feels like a joy, even though I know it's a mixed blessing and the interim, fall, is almost always a sweet segue way.
Whether we like it or not, it's here. Our crab trees are already mostly shorn, and the lawn's bedecked with the scattered early refuse of the maples and the lindens. Our own warm quilt got outed from the closet last week already. In little more than ten days, the whole Siouxland region turned yellow. Beans shrunk, corn wilted. What was emerald is now golden, almost cartoonish, really, an amazing and thorough transformation. We're in a different world.
The signs are all in place. This morning, the sun points toward winter. It's coming, like it or not.
I'm happy. Sort of.
This morning I'm thankful for the change of seasons, really. But then, I'm fickle as the Israelites. I'm sure I'll be even more thankful on the other side, come June.
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Ecclesiastes 3
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