...............................Continued

The upland pastures are blue with autumn haze now. The sugar maples around Stillmeadow burn bright with color. The whole world seems to be gold and scarlet and wine. no two trees are exactly alike and the variations in tone are limitless. There is one sugar maple which is pinky - red and I like to stand under it and just feel the color. No two trees turn at the same time, either. We have one maple which refuses to believe it is not summer long after the other trees nearby are blazing away. If you had the right plug-in, you would be hearing nice music now.

All shades of red and gold are in the swamp too as the brushes are kindles by autumn. Now I wish I could paint with brushes and pigment and not depend on words for there are just no words to describe some of the colors. There is one thing I have not read about in any descriptions of our autumn and that is the way the leaves actually seem to give forth a brilliant light, so that even on a grey day the sun seems to be shining.

The country roads wind along the valleys and up the low hills (ours are the beginning of the Litchfield hills). The pasture grass is still green and the hills fold away in blue haze and there are the trees massed at the ends of the pastures, glowing.  We have some pine woods, not many, and they strike a note of dark green in the countryside. White houses and grey or red or pale yellow barns add accent notes. I am reminded of Edna St. Vincent Millay's "O World, I cannot hold thee close enough!"

Stillmeadow Sampler

My non - dog friends cannot see why I am willing to have a bevy underfoot all the time. And it reminds me of one time when I had to make a trip to Philadelphia and stayed in a hotel several days. I felt morose. The last day I saw a woman get out of the elevator with a black cocker and I nearly knocked a man down getting there to greet him. I felt fine until he and his mistress went out of the hotel. Then I checked the hours until I would get back to my own.

That time when I got back, Honey was not there at the gate to greet me. Her tired heart had simply stopped beating, and although she was well over fourteen, I wondered whether perhaps she had missed me too much. It would have been utterly selfish to wish her back but I couldn't help wishing she might have been there to meet me. The fourteen years seemed suddenly a very short time. I had helped her to be born and held a tiny soft ball of satin in my palm. Even just three minutes old, she began to wriggle, and paddle the air with minute raspberry paws. She felt tonic, and the life instinct pulsed through her. An instinct is not supposed to pulse but that is the way I thought of it.

She was not a beautiful puppy but I felt we belonged together. Later, after we had called her a wind - hound for some time, she suddenly blossomed into a facsimile of her Champion Cream Pie sire. She was wheat - gold with low - set long ears and dark amber eyes. She had a blocky muzzle, with a dark nose. And she followed me like a golden shadow. We had a good life together, but as I say it seemed very short.

I often know she walks beside me, especially at Christmas. She was very fond of Christmas, especially of what went on in the kitchen. but she enjoyed the tree too and sat looking at it often. She always had, as they all did, her own present and she appreciated it although she never played with toys the way Tiki and Jonquil do.

There is a truth about love which one learns by having a companion such as Honey. My devotion to her was very special but never prevented me from cherishing Little Sister or any others we ever had. There was always room in my heart. And this, I believe, is the way it should be.

The Stillmeadow Road

The cockers love October as much as we do Jerry is so big now and so swashbuckling. He digs the deepest hole any dog ever did. He lugs the biggest bones the farthest. He gets the muddiest. Exuberant, gay, optimistic, he is the kind of youngster that you laugh at while you fend him away from that pile of fresh laundry on the table. he can jump right up on the typewriter and nip off a piece of manuscript paper. He is so full of spirits that he ought to be used as an ad for vitamins. He loves everything and everybody. He is one long, constant hurrah.

Little sister and Linda play with him in his roughhouse fashion. These two are adorable, and different as two people can be. Linda is smooth and black and large - eyed and cuddly. Little Sister is so busy all she can stop for is a lick or two as she flies past. She is the first one over the gate, the first one to the hole, the quickest after the food bowl. Of bones, she has the largest; Linda can have what's left. She was the first one up on the cellar door, sliding down and climbing back to slide again.

We often think Big Sister had something to do with sending her to us for the never - failing grief at being without one who was so much the heart of the place.

Life renews itself, no matter how much we may suffer. Whatever beautiful and precious we may have is always ours to keep. Losing one we love is possible only if we let it be. death and disaster, separation and sorrow seem sometimes so much larger than all else, but they are not. Over the deepest scars in the cutover forests grow young, green, ferny thickets. and these do not blot out the memory of the trees once standing there; they are nourished by the roots. but I know people who would say, "Leave the blackened stumps and burn off the new green, it is desecration to do aught else." They are wrong. I know how wrong they are because a black and white dog has taught me. So it should be with people. Death really prevails only when we deliberately walk with him.

One gets to musing like this in that hour after supper which, of all hours in the day, I love best. When the day's work is packed away and the house is tranquil and the evening is young. I always feel a swift enchantment. Maybe it is a return to the days of my youth, a swallow dip into yesterday. I think of what Faith says, "Youth is such a wonderful gift and so often bestowed on the wrong people." Then I think some people never let the color of life wither away into sterility. The leaves glow in October, they soon fall, and the bare branches lift to a cold sky. But I should like to keep the color in my heart always.

Stillmeadow Seasons

Back to October, part one

HOUSATONIC RIVER

GLADYS TABER: Page 1 / GLADYS TABER: Page 2

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