A few stands of color held on until the end. Someone had to hold the gold in salute to her. Fallen leaves tumbled across the leveled fields. Someone had to dance in her honor. Vast clouds sailed on a brisk, cold wind. Someone had to wrap her in ermine. She, who brought the harvest to fruition. She, who woke us from our summer dreams with the glory of her song. Someone got to stand here in this field, breathing the fragrance of her, watching as she spent her last hours singing a final amen as the winds and the hours swept her away.
As night fell, a curtain of rain swept through the woods, hurling the maples’ gold to the ground, except for a token few, the bravest. And of course the russet oaks held on. They’ll endure nearly ‘til winter. The green on the forest floor was gone, too, tucked in against the sudden cold beneath the deep quilt of fallen leaves. As I peered at this stark new scene I thought to myself that at least I would now be able to see the squirrels leaping, the turkeys and deer ambling up the hill from the field below. And hardly had the thought written itself across my mind when a buck appeared, large, and sporting an impressive rack, slowly ascending the western slope as if he owned it. Now the serious side of autumn has begun. Act two.
Two years ago, in mid-October, the stream that flows from the last spillway down to the lake was lined with a vast heap of autumn wildflowers so artfully arranged that the sight made you stop and stare at the textures and movement and colors as if you were standing in a great ancient gallery before a masterpiece that took up a whole section of wall, only this gallery was made of earth and sky. The next year, some no-doubt educated and informed person with authority over this piece of county land ordered it all mowed down, turned to grass. I have a little card on my bulletin board that says “Look around you. Appreciate what you see. Nothing will be the same in a year.”
I’ve been leafing through old files again. It seems like the season for it. Today I ran across an essay I wrote on a lovely June Day way back in 2016, an age that seems to belong, somehow, to a different world. Still, we grappled then with the same kinds of fears we find ourselves facing today. Even though it’s a tad longer than my usual Sunday Letters, I thought the piece might touch you as it did me. So here it is, with love. ~Susan
I woke just before dawn yesterday morning. I’m not an early riser. The birds hadn’t even begun to chirp. Yet here I was, wide awake. I made a cup of coffee and took it out to my front porch to experience the beginning of the day. As I took my first sip, I noticed a faint ribbon of pink just above the eastern hills, gradually growing brighter. Looking directly overhead, I saw that the sky had gone from dusky gray to light blue graced by soft clouds. When I looked down again, a whole palette of color was lighting the sky—pale gold, coral, robin’s egg blue, soft lavender. And as if to acknowledge the coming of another day, the birds woke and began their morning chorus.
I let myself drink in the peace of it. The world has been such a brutal place these last few weeks, its violence and mayhem loud and sickening. Yet here I was, enveloped in birdsong and sunrise, sipping freshly brewed coffee. I felt lucky, and grateful, and kind of humbled to be so blessed.
I paused to do a few rounds of loving-kindness meditation, and as I sent wishes for well-being, peace and happiness to friends and acquaintances, to my community, to my region, to my nation, and then to all sentient beings with whom I share the globe, I realized that more of us are living unscathed by mayhem at the moment than are directly touched by it.
Most of us live our ordinary lives, attending to our daily routines and chores, relating in our usual ways with families and coworkers and friends. We share our smiles, and sometimes our tears. We share our rituals, our news, our opinions, our gossip. We play together. We squabble. We make up. All of us. All over the world. And isn’t that beautiful!
That we can go on, determined to live ordinary lives in the face of extraordinary times, is remarkable.
I came across a couple observations by American historian and professor Howard Zinn this week. He said:
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. “
I get the impression that Zinn is thinking of acts of high bravery and daring when he talks about how magnificently we can behave. And indeed we can. But I think courage is more than the extraordinary act performed at great risk. I think it’s also the determination to go on living ordinary lives as well as we can even when the world seems mad. The acts of compassion, and sacrifice and kindness can be tiny ones as well, consistently performed despite it all.
Mark Twain had this to say about courage: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.”
When we live our ordinary lives in the face of what seems almost omnipresent violence and rage, we are being brave. By refusing to surrender to fear, however loudly and persistently the media screams about atrocities, we tell the world it cannot take the best of us. We will behave magnificently, holding to the dignity of our ordinary lives. And sometimes pausing to recognize that despite it all, we are surrounded by extraordinary goodness and beauty, and, sometimes, bathed in moments of transcendent peace.
Wishing you a week of brave, wonderful, ordinary life.
Their motion caught my eye, a thousand leaves whirling in the wind as if a cyclone had caught them, their ecstasy filling the air, lifting my spirit along with their own, etching the moment into the surface of eternity, dancing there, and me with them, forever.
“There is one outstanding example of pure dance: that of the whirling dervishes, an art that has been practiced since the 13th century. The procedure is part of a Muslim ceremony called the dhikr, the purpose of which is to glorify God and seek spiritual perfection. Not all dervish orders dance; some simply stand on one foot and move the other foot to music. Those who dance, or, rather, whirl, are the Mawlawī dervishes, an order that was founded by the Persian poet and mysticJalāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī at Konya, in Anatolia, in the 13th century.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Islamic-arts/Dervish-dancing
Even now, beneath skies deep with clouds and a cold wind blowing, even now, in the days of dwindling light, the Yes provides reminders. The trees may be nearly bare and the fields stripped of vegetation, but look! Here is a maple still holding its color, a kiss-bright red to dispel the gloom. Go into the night believing. You are supported, and loved.
The red-winged blackbirds are gone now, having flown like the leaves from the trees who stand bare behind the low blue creek, raising their white limbs to the sky as if in celebration of their freedom. Except for the rustling of the breeze through the bright oaks and the occasional call of a crow, silence reigns, a portent of the coming winter’s quiet. But before the earth settles into dream, she dances one more time, in jeweled colors lifted high, like promises of beauty to come, as she whirls toward winter, toward another distant spring.
The leaves gather in a pool on the surface of the lake as if to paint an image of the treetops from which they sailed. The lake joins in. Above the golden gathering, it creates ripples to mimic wind. Beneath, its waters are calm as earth. Wherever we sail, the heart remembers home, our source, our destination.
Some places make you feel as if you had somehow been transported to an alternate world. You can’t dream in them. You can only stand face to face with the color and texture and taste of it all, its temperature on your skin, your thoughts snatched up by the wonder that such a place could even be. This was one of those places. But I knew it was real and I was in it, my son beside me, both of us loving this sliver of reality that’s somehow slid outside of time.
I walk the hillside gathering twigs that I will use as tinder for fires on cold nights, an autumn custom that I began a couple decades ago. The air carries the fragrance of fallen leaves and coming rain. For one brief moment, the sun breaks through the layers of cloud and I turn to see it kiss the treetops as they dance, tall and bright, against the charcoal sky. I add the moment to my twig bin along with a fallen gold leaf. Remind me, I say to it, the next time that I touch you, of this warm and shining day when I saw the sun brushing the mid-October leaves and watched them shimmer in its light.
