September Song

I will remember today, a perfect day in early fall. Morning brought drizzle, mist and chilly air. Birds were silent in the early light except for the soft chipping sound of the cardinals, shrouded from view behind a veil of mist and the soft grey light of of morning. Cricket calls were muffled. The last of the katydids, their voices creaking with age, spoke in soft stutters.

In the afternoon, the sun broke through bathing the whole valley in a bronze light. I took a walk in the woods behind the house where trees dripped from the morning’s rain, and the forest floor bloomed with mushrooms that had sprouted over-night through the damp leaves. On the north hillside tiny fungi the size of shirt buttons perched theselves on hair-like stalks, littering the ground like pearls scattered by some careless millionaire ovblivious of there worth.

As I returned to the house, a fresh breeze tossed the trees.  A shaft of light slanted through their branches as though a door in the cosmos had been left a-jar, spilling  light from some ancient star into my waking life. Spiders spun. The planet breathed. For the first time in a long time  my mind grew quiet.  My spirit took up the slow, mellow, rhythm of the fading year. I felt spent, and I rested from my labors.

To Everything A Season

Out my back door the last hot days of August have turned the lane to dust.  Yesterday, as I walked  the fields, curing grasses crunched underfoot. Dogwood and sarvis blushed at the woods edge, and native grasses rushed to set seed before the first frost. Today the flowers of autumn are just beginning to bloom. A profusion of New England Asters will soon nod in the September breeze providing nectar for lingering butterflies and hummingbirds. This year, more than ever, I look to the blooming of the asters for a sign that next year will be gentler to us here on the farm, that the world will become a more forgiving place.

When I was a girl, my Grandmother Long taught me a verse about the changing seasons. I especially loved the lines describing September, the month of her birth, and the beginning to her favorite season. The poem went like this: “January freezes, February thaws. March sends up her breezes, April buds the haws. In May the sun shines brightly, June brings purple haze. July’s days are scorching, August’s lilies blaze. September blooms the asters for Octobers golden crown. November leaves come tumbling, December’s trees are brown.”  

That childish verse,  recited to me by my Grandmother, echoed a promise. It assured me that the seasons would come and go on time, following one upon the other as they had since the Beginning. Today, with the threat of climate change calling into question our very survival on this planet,  this simple promise holds great import. What would our lives be like if summer and winter, springtime and harvest were to vanish for all time?

In the early part of the twentieth century, My grandparents farmed the bottomland, along Spring Creek near the little community of Relfe, Missouri. The old farm was home not only to them, but to my dad and uncle, Grandmother’s maiden sister, Aunt Fannie, and my Great Grandmother Duncan who lived to be 102.  Grandmother plowed the fields with her own mule, kept the large family garden, and milked the family cow. Throughout her long life she spun rich tales about panthers in the hills behind Spring Creek, the night the barn burned, and the time my father fell from the roof of the barn. She painted images for me of Dad being pulled in a little cart by their goat, Billy Whiskers,  and my grandfather riding astride Old Colonel, the bay stallion he used to herd the cattle.  Well into her 94th year, Grandmother and I spent time together. We sang in front of the her old upright piano, savored afternoon tea with biscuits and homemade watermellon perserves, and walked together along dusty autumn lanes lined with her beloved asters.

The morning she had her stroke, that September day when the eggs dropped one by one from her hand as she prepared breakfast, I went to see her for the last time.  She lay in the hospital wrapped in a deep coma, her snow-white hair lying soft upon her pillow, her heart laboring under the weight of years. I took her hand and whispered to her about the blue September sky. I promised I would go in the afternoon to water  the ferns that sat either side of the painted swing on her front porch, because in the fall of 1978 September had been dry as a bone.

When I returned from my errand, Grandmother was gone. As I sat beside the shell that had once housed the spirit of Maude Marion Duncan, I understood for the first time why that old poem about the seasons had touched me. Like the asters under the blue September sky, Grandmother’s life had come full circle. But it did not end there. Seeds fall into the ground. Spring comes round again. Flowers boom. Autumn returns. The simple passing of the seasons becomes our connection to the one hope that sustains us: Life, in whatever form, will endure.   

“September blooms the asters for October’s golden crown.”  As I water the ferns on my front porch, I think of  Grandmother. The world she knew has vanished. Someday, so will mine. But today the fall rains have returned. The asters proclaim that just around the bend lies at least one more harvest. For me, that is enough. . . more than enough

Resurrection

Outside my window a landscape bereft of green seems still caught in the net of winter. “Blackbird singing in the dead of night.”

Spring peepers fall silent, their vernal pools gone cold under a grey sky. “Blackbird singing in the dead of night.”

Cows soldier on heavy with life, wandering brown fields in search of any green thing.  “Blackbird singing in the dead of night.”

Crocus mourn, closing bright petals against the raw wind. “Blackbird singing in the dead of night. “ 

In the dark, we swallowed the seeds of resurrection so in the sunlight we might come back rejoicing.

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life you were waiting for this moment to arise.” ~Blackbird by Paul McCartney

Marianne

“I shall keep some cool green memory in my heart to draw upon

should days be bleak and cold.

I shall hold it like a cherished thing apart,

to turn to now or when I shall be old.”

~Grace Crowell

I”ll always remember her sitting on Grandmother Long’s bed: China head, rosy cheeks, startling blue eyes, her delicate mouth slightly open in surprise. She wore the original pink silk dress, now faded with age, but washed and ironed faithfully with Grandmother’s careful hands. But the hat, the  petticoat and the shoes were kept in a dark corner of Grandmother’s dresser because, as Grandmother said, “They’re much too fragile to be left in the open air, Holly Ann.”

Marianne didn’t have doll’s hair. It was real and just the color of my grandmother’s. I know that because Grandmother kept her hair receiver on the dressing table next to her ivory comb and brush, and each time I went for a visit, I stole a lock from the strange little dish with a hole in it and matched it to Marianne’s. 

I always loved Marianne, and ran to see her as soon as we entered the red brick bungalow on Monroe Street. I’d first stroke her cheek and then the pale soft hair. I never hugged Marianne; she wasn’t that kind of doll. There was something regal about her, like my grandmother. Marianne’s hair was caught with a pink ribbon, one Grandmother had added when she put the little hat away. When I went to visit her, she tied a pink ribbon in my hair that was just like Marianne’s.

My grandmother’s maiden name was Maude Marion Duncan. The Maude part, she always said, came from being named after the mule. Great Grandmother Duncan had eleven children before she had my grandmother, and when it came time to name this newest baby daughter, it was said that the family simply ran out of names. I was convinced that my grandmother had not run out of names when she chose the beautiful name, Marianne.

The morning Grandmother had her stroke, and the eggs dropped one by one from her hand as she prepared breakfast; that same morning as she lay in the hospital with her face set in a wry smile, she told my mother and me it was time to get Marianne. Together, we drove to the little house on Monroe, walked through the high back porch with its old painted swing and its forest of ferns, and went inside.

The kitchen smelled of lemons and vanilla; honeysuckle vines covered the dining room windows tossing green shadows across the broad oak table. The house was silent except for the ticking of the mantel clock, counting out these last moments of my grandmother’s life as it had done for nearly ninety-four years. We walked into the bedroom, and I gently lifted Marianne off the bed. Together, Mother and I wrapped her in tissue paper and laid her in a shoe box. Just as we turned to leave, I remembered the bonnet and the little shoes hidden away in the dresser drawer; I hastily tucked them in beside Marianne.

Now when I see Marianne sitting on the bed as she had long ago, not a doll to be hugged, but to be admired from afar, I think of Grandmother. I remember sitting beside her at the old upright piano singing Galway Bay and My Sweetheart’s the Man in the Moon. I recall how Grandmother told me stories about the farm, took me for walks, and patted my slender arms. But time changes much. Now, some 60 years later, when I  pick up Marianne, I hug her close, and tell her I love her. I whisper that I don’t just admire her from afar. I take out the bonnet and  tie it under her chin; I put on the crumbling shoes. Marianne is ready for anything.

I wrote this at a spiritual retreat in the mountains of North Carolina ; A portrait of my grandmother, Maude Marion Duncan

The Changing Seasons

The year is still new, like the fresh snow that blankets the farm this winter day. But time passes quickly. Bleak February will soon give way to March and a wind from the south. Before we know it, high summer will pour across our fields in a flood of wild flowers. Then blossoms will fade, and the leaves of another autumn will scatter across the pastures. In the blink of an eye it will be winter once more.

My grandmother and grandfather had a farm out on Spring Creek not far from where we live now. When I was a little girl, Grandmother would tell me stories about their life on the home place: Plowing the spring garden with her mule, storing cream and butter in the spring house on hot summer days, gathering persimmons in the fall, walking the snowy fields along Spring Creek. Her life was  measured  by the endless cycles of the seasons. She used to recite a poem to me, words I knew by heart by the time I was five. “January freezes, February thaws. March sends up her breezes, April buds the haws. In May the sun shines brightly, June brings purple haze. July skies are scorching, August lilies blaze. September blooms the asters for October’s golden crown, November leaves come tumbling. December leaves are brown. And so the seasons touch us, winter snows and summer rains. The Seasons’s timeless message, life must end to start again.” Down through the years those words have kept me vigilant as I have celebrated the beauty of  the earth, my island home.

Grandmother and Granddad were a part of the land, and our family has chosen to walk the same furrow, our feet firmly planted in the fields of home.  Winter on a farm is an in-between time. The frozen land sleeps beneath the blowing snow. The buds of next years leaves cling to the bare branches, like beads on a rosary.  Life becomes smaller, yet more intense with the onset of winter.  cows and sheep shelter in the barns; the distant fields lie empty. The animal’s survival depends on us now. Even the winter birds come in close, gathering  next to the house and the dairy barn to eat  at my  feeders.  We stay close as well, tending the hearth and the needs of the animals. The middle of the day finds us indoors instead of out in the fields working. Night comes early, driving us indoors after evening chores, seeking firelight as darkness rides the trees. 

But when we gather around the supper table as a family, we shift gears, and our world expands. We reach out in our conversations, explore a bigger world of ideas, make plans, spin dreams. Seed catalogs appear; there’s talk of which field to plow first, how many cows to breed, what fences will need mending.  As the light grows, so does our world, until one evening we look up, and it’s still daylight when we leave the dairy barn. The cardinal calls from the sycamore tree staking out his territory. In the lengthening twilight, flocks of robins descend on the pastures looking for worms in the warming soil. Spring is coming, the rebirth of the rolling seasons, the unfailing promise of the awakening land.

Ben Logan writes in his book, The Land Remembers. “Let me hear seasons changing in the night. It is any season, and I am every age I have ever been. Streams are wakening in the spring, rain wets the dust of summer, fallen apples ferment in an orchard, snow pelts the frozen land. Once you have lived on the land, been a partner with its moods, secrets, and seasons, you cannot leave. The living land remembers, touching you in unguarded moments saying, ‘I am here, You are part of me.’”

Wild Geese

 

It’s bitter cold today. The fields and woods are frozen hard, the sky broods over the farm like an inverted bowl. Winter has come to stay. As I went out to feed my birds this morning, I thought of the days just past, the hard, cold world that revealed itself in a single, violent act. How do we go on?  The snow birds in their black cowls settle on the ground near me like  monks gathering for morning prayer. A cardinal flies to the top of the persimmon tree, a drop of blood against the snow. The wind whips around the corner of the house blowing my seed bag across the yard. Suddenly a longing for spring engulfs me like a flash flood. I squeeze my eyes tight. Let me see a single snowdrop pushing through the hard ground. Let me touch just one swelling bud in the alder thicket. Let me smell damp earth—A  fool’s hope.  I know that.  No sun will shine today. Tonight and tomorow night will fall starless and cold. Soft twilights lie far off, locked away in growing icicles that festoon the bluffs above Big Valley.  

The feeders filled, I head back to the house for the warmth and light that awaits me. As I round the corner of the yard, I hear a call far in the distance.  As the sound grows, a flock of Canada geese materialize out of the winter ethers.  Overhead now, their voices grow to a wild harmony.  They circle the pond searching for open water, but finding none speed north disappearing as quickly as they had come.  I strain my ears until their ancient voices die away, replaced by the steady hammering of a chickadee opening his seed on the deck railing.

Like the geese and the winter birds I am here today, and the world is wonderful and terrible. The geese must carry on in their search for water, the birds in their search for food, and I in my serach for answers. We are all born, and we all die, but as the naturalist, Diane Ackerman said, “What a savage and beautiful country lies in between.”

Reflection: “Wild Geese” a poem by Mary Oliver:

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese,

harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of  things.”

The Quiet Season

With autumn coming on, things have slowed down in the Hen Garden. The girls are enjoying the cooler weather, a late hatching of grasshoppers, and a well-deserved respite from egg-laying as they go through their annual moult. All free-range chickens (and wild birds as well) moult this time of year, shedding and renewing their feathers before the cold of winter sets in. Feathers are a bird’s crowning glory, not just because they are beautiful, but because they help regulate body temperature and protect against wind and moisture. Over time, feathers get worn down and lose their water-resistance, so it is essential that they be shed and replaced. The warm days of early fall are a perfect time for the moult, because food is plentiful, the weather is mild, and nesting season is over, so a hen can devote all her inner resources to making new feathers rather than keeping cool or laying eggs.

Most people know about moulting because its the time of year when chickens stop laying eggs. Feathers and eggs may not seem to have much in common, but in fact, they are made of the same essential nutrient: protein. Feather are about 85% protein, so when a hen is replenishing her plumage, the protein she consumes is used to make feathers instead of eggs. This vacation from egg-laying also gives the hen’s reproductive system a much needed break and lets her put on a few pounds before winter as well. Moulting is essential for the well-being of my girls, but I think there is a message here for me as well.

As I watch my girls scratch for grain and dustbathe in the mellow autumn light, it occurs to me that my hens have an advantage over me: Their lives are guided by the cycles of the natural world, not the artificial rules created by humanity. Chickens like mine, who live free and happy lives, trust Nature’s sublime wisdom and listen to the needs of their bodies, not the voice of a world demanding productivity. Barnyard hens may not build great cities or unravel the secrets of string theory, but at least they know that their bodies need rest – something we humans have apparently forgotten. In our desperate attempt to prove that we are “above Nature,” we  deprive ourselves of the wisdom that has kept the natural world in order for millions of years. We say proudly how we refuse to be at the mercy of nature, but there’s a catch: When we aren’t at the mercy of nature, we cannot receive Nature’s mercy. It’s a high price to pay just to prove we can do whatever we like.

Watching little Sylvie Ann, Ariadne, Miss Hennypenny, and Hen Boelyn puttering around in the barn lot, chasing grasshoppers and plucking plump spiders from their webs, it is clear that they feel no guilt about shorting us a few dozen eggs a week; they need a vacation and that’s that. Their bodies speak and they listen - without argument and without conflict. What a lovely way to live.

Autumn Mushrooms

September 9, 2010 

  

Photo by Julie Atkinson

 

“I love to wander through the woodlands hoary in the soft light of an autumnal day, when summer gathers up her robes of glory and like a dream of beauty glides away.” ~  Sarah Whitman 

The fall rains have come. No bird calls accompanied the dawn. A gold finch sat in the branches of my persimmon tree, his feathers smoldering like a dying ember. Cricket calls were muffled; the katydids spoke in soft stutters. 

In the afternoon I took a walk in the woods back of the house. On the forest floor a bloom of mushrooms had appeared. On the north hillside, a sea of toad stools no bigger than shirt buttons balanced themselves on hair-like stalks, peering above last year’s leaves like tiny periscopes. Further into the trees, the ground was transformed into a land-locked coral reef glowing with the reds, yellows and oranges of coral mushrooms. Walking along, I felt like manta ray, slipping among the arms and tentacles of the corals. The soft wind from the hilltop became the tide gently tossing my mushroom reef as it ebbed and flowed through the ocean of seasons. 

Later, as I sat on log surrounded by still another landscape of ghostly umbrellas, I spied a giant praying mantis resting next to me by a line of oyster mushrooms. His 3-inch long body was sable, his belly the color of moss on river stones. As I leaned closer, he settled his wings closer to his body, then swiveled his magnificent head, observing me with gleaming eyes, full of wisdom and mystery. 

Rain wet my face as I rose from log and headed down the hill. By the time I reached the yard, the southern leopard frogs were calling, roused from their day-dreams by the return of the rain. These beautiful green frogs with black and gold spots are the only ones that sing in the autumn, and even then, only in wet years when the Ozarks is nurtured with abundant moisture. 

It’s evening. A red strand of Virginia creeper winds around my deck. Acorns fall in the woods with a sound like pattering raindrops. The chinquapin oak has produced mast this year. Its branches are loaded with clusters of acorns that shine like patent-leather. Light slants, spiders spin, the planet breathes. I feel myself taking up the ancient rhythms of the earth—Old autumn, old me coming home. For a few timeless moments I rest from my labors. ~ Holly Atkinson 

The Spiders of Autumn

August 25, 2010 

Photo by Julie Atkinson

 

 “Summer stores away her memories on russet August days as the year prepares its autumn festival.” ~ Author unknown 

The spiders of autumn have come. From first light to moon rise, they spin, stringing their long strands of silk between the flowers in my garden, weaving intricate webs above my windows and under the eaves of my house. The orb weavers have returned, each with its bright yellow thorax, the garden spiders, round bodies like spilled paint, spin bright wheels on my front porch where the Virginia creeper blows in the breeze like a green curtain. 

My autumn guests are mothers all, storing up energy for their great work, the spinning of the egg sac. This silken ark of life will protect the next generation over the long winter, until on a soft day in spring the tiny spiderlings will spin their first thread and take to the air. This act of “ballooning” will scatter them over the fields to take up their lives as their mothers did before them. When August comes round next year, their time in the world will be nearly over. For as Charlotte told us, “A spider’s life is very uncertain.” 

Spiders are artists of the highest order. Their intricate dew-covered wheels shimmer and dance in the morning light, turning autumn days into the rarest of jewels. The details of their strange existence, so unlike my own, captures my imagination, drawing me into their cloistered world of light and shadow. 

Inside each one is the secret code of web spinning. Spin tack, spin, tack, the spider moves around the center of its web in an endless circle, each touch of a brittle leg creating the path of its particular destiny. Unlike me, the spider does not have free will. Each one is set upon his path by a Power beyond my comprehension, and the intricate pattern of his life is set with the spinning of his first thread. 

My spiders are dear to me; I love the fact that they cast their nets of protection around my house as though I too am dear to them. We journey through the world together, the spiders and I. But as the years of my life unravel before me, I wonder. When my long summer comes to a close, and the mornings strung for the last time with spider webs and dew, what will I have done on of my chosen path? Will my tapestry be so beautiful? Will my great work lead to a reawakening in the spring? ~Holly Atkinson

Lady’s Tresses

  

Lady's Tresses - Photo by Julie Atkinson

 

August 24, 2010 

 “There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.” ~ Alexander Woolcott 

 High summer has come and gone—so long since I’ve paused in the long string of days to share my thoughts with you. It’s warm today, but the air is heavy with change. Light comes later in the mornings; shadows are long by mid-afternoon. When I mowed today, I found lady’s tresses blooming on the shady hillside in my back yard. This marvelous wild orchid native to Missouri is rare now. Its home was the tall grass prairie, the windswept sea of grass that was once the glory of the continent’s heart.  Now it lingers only on tiny islands of native grasses, holds forth in uncut fence rows or patches of meadow that somehow escape the onslaught of the plow.  Underneath towns and cities, its seeds lie buried forever beneath manicured lawns, sidewalks and streets. 

 I discovered my patch of lady’s tresses some 15 years ago when we built the house here in toad hollow, and have protected their tiny habitat from the steady march of the surrounding forest.  Their tall green spikes rise from the earth wrapped in perfect spirals of white petals, delicate as parchment. Lady’s tresses are shy plants, rather plain as orchids go, flourishing off the beaten path as though hesitant to be about in a world where their kind is disappearing. 

 I feel a deep kinship with this vanishing species because my generation is vanishing as well. The world is changing; I can feel it in my bones. Much of humanity seems to be sliding down a slippery slope on a downward path I do not wish to follow.  I am content to live out my life here on this quiet hillside, marking the flow of days with the lady’s tresses, blooming without renown in the autumn of my life. Growing old is becoming rare again, discovering one’s own uniqueness, realizing that real perfection lies in being true to who you are. 

 On the path with the orchids I discover a walking-stick clinging to a stalk of big bluestem—frail as a bone—but full of life and wonder—like me. ~ Holly Atkinson,