(Continued)

A few early-fallen leaves drift on the pond and algae floats on the surface. The baby frogs have grown and look as if they had been polished with wax. The country roads have a quiet look, for the heaviest summer work is done. At dusk, I like to ride toward the Litchfield hills and watch the lights go on in the houses and think about the families getting ready for supper. The cows come down the driftways, chewing, as cows always do. I have never seen a cow with her mouth completely quiet, which reminds me of some people I know.

August

We pack our supper and go to Roxbury just before sunset. The water of the trout stream there is colored with amber and gold, and the little meadows across are filled with birds. Avery cool, special odor comes from the pine woods on the hill.

Fancy food is not necessary at any picnic, because simple dishes taste better anyway in the open air, and if you season your food with sunset you have a meal to dream about anyway.

Coming home, the villages are dreaming under the moon, and the old white houses look as serene as if time never set his mailed boot on the flagstone paths. The maples above Stillmeadow are heavy with summer, the pointed leaves of the lilacs quiver with no wind blowing.

Honey barks absently as she comes across the terrace. Barking is just a habit with her when she has nothing special to do. The youngest puppy in the kennel answers with a soft, excited yip, and every dog on the place lifts a noisy muzzle. When the barking dies away, they all settle down again and the summer night is still.

Honey looks smug with that special smugness a cocker can have. "Now everything is taken care of for the night", she tells me.

And the sapphire eyes of a Siamese named Esmé are shining, shining blue in the silver night as we go in, with another day folded away into yesterday.

Stillmeadow Seasons

The season reminds me of Byron: "The sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breath, And love itself have rest."

For after the vigorous growth of spring and summer, nature seems to pause, and the countryside has a dreamy look.We need to pause too, in the midst of pickling and canning and freezing, and let the serenity of the season give us tranquillity. it is necessary before the brisk days of autumn and the work of getting shored up for the winter and before the long cold brings shoveling and wood-carrying. It is time to sit quietly in the shade of the apple trees. and to think of Thoreau's words: "Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

There is more to living than the endless activities we all pursue. Most of us indeed seem to live on a wheel which revolves faster and faster but has no true destination. I've got a million things to do. I can't keep up. I never have time to sit down and read. Oh, I love Beethoven but we seldom have a chance to play records these days. We are so busy -so busy -so busy.

But since we have so much time allotted to us, some of it should be spent in reflecting, and some in pursuits which have nothing to do with our daily lives, such as enriching our spirits with music, nourishing our minds with literature, enlarging our horizons by looking at great painting. Because life isn't a business, it is a precious gift.

Americans are said to be always in a hurry, and I think this is a valid criticism. I suspect that if we hurried less, we should find more time, in a strange reversal of pattern.

That is, we should seem to have time enough for the things we "simply have to get done," and still time for leisure. I think the sense of pressure most of us feel is old-fashioned nervous tension. It is hardly conceivable that we work harder than the women in early Colonial days in New England. For we do not card and spin wool, make our own soap, carry water with which to wash clothes by hand. If we cook over the open fire, we do not get ALL our meals over it, and do the baking in the dutch oven. We live push-button lives. Even the carpet sweeper has been replaced by the vacuum cleaner. And the telephone presumably saves hours of time.

But we are too busy to contemplate anything but the next day's round of chores. Why? Part of it is the raising of children. I notice children never just go out and play. They "take" sports. They have dancing lessons. They have group activities for ceramics, woodworking, leatherwork, jewelrymaking. Boys no longer go outside and toss a baseball, they belong to the Little League, well organixed and well regimented. And woe to the boy who does not make the team.

All of these activities involve endless chauffeuring on the part of the parents, endless waiting around until the game or rehearsal or class is over. If there is an occasional lull, the children do not know what to do, they stand around or they watch television. They never paddle around the edge of a lake until they learn to swim, they have a swimming instructor, and graded classes. They are getting trained for a life of rushing from one activity to another, but they are not getting a chance to develop their own resources themselves. When they grow up, there is practically nothing they will not know how to do - except use their imagination!

I found, after Jill died, that I was working myself into a severe nervous state because I never could catch up with the daily chores, the kennel jobs, the errands, and futile attempts to keep some sort of books. I added all this to the major job of adjusting to what was, at that time, complete desolation.

One night I was really taking the count. Just putting one foot ahead of the other assumed gigantic proportions. I found I could not decide what to do next. And then, as if Jill spoke to me, I felt the sense of quiet that she always gave me, and it was as if she said, "Just do what you can. Forget what you can't."

I made some fresh coffee and sat by the embers of the fire and faced the fact that I had been living with no plan. Every day was a confusion of things unfinished while more things piled up. Why had I thought one person could do as much as two? Did I expect to have everything at Stillmeadow exactly as it had been when Jill put in an efficient ten-hour day? She never seemed to hurry but worked with an economy of motion whether she was building a gate or balancing the accounts.

As I considered my difficulties, I felt her presence, encouraging me. My depression lifted, the tension vanished.

"I've been pretty silly," I said aloud.

The next day, I went back to my typewriter, and first I made a list of absolutely essential chores. I put this in the kitchen, and forgot it until I had worked as usual at the typewriter. This meant that I was not worrying all day because of never having time to do my own main job. When I finished my hours for the day, I found that the essential list could be taken care of, and I still did not work half the night.

The Stillmeadow Road

What I like is berrying. Up the hill to the old pasture land on a summer day, with an old lard pail hooked to my belt -- that is something. The pasture is full of blackberries and nobody takes care of them but God. There they are, rich purple-black, and smelling of sun and summer. The fall in the pail with soft plops, each one a perfect little nugget of goodness. The pasture grass is short and green and they old grey ledges are warm in the sun. The lichens are beautiful and the spring runs cool in the hollow.

You can hear the neighbor's tractor on the opposite hill, and it is a comfortable sound. In the soft mud at the edge of the spring are the narrow, delicate prints of deer.

Better than the blackberry pasture, however, is Blueberry Hill. We had to live here long enough to become natives before we were permitted to see it.

My feeling is that when Heaven was being made, somebody cut off the selvage, and it fell down, and this is it. Incredibly remote, the acres of blueberries stretch for literally miles -- open land, tight thickets, deep shadowy wood, hot steamy swampland, and all of it full of blueberries.

From the high places, you see half of Connecticut rolling below in a green and tranquil sea. The white houses look like small boats at anchor, safely moored. Distant hills take on a blue tone, almost like the blueberries. There is usually a faint haze, delicate and dreamy. It begins to deepen around the middle of August, when the late berries ripen.

In the thickets you see only interlaced branches making a green gloom. Deep moss stills all footsteps; only the voices of the berry pickers come faint in the silence. The high bushes are here, with ripe and unripe berries at the same time. The unripe ones are waxy -- first a pale jade green, then a pearly color.

The blueberries have a spicy smell; the tips are like little fairy crowns, and they are perfectly enormous. We pick until we can hardly lift our hands, and the pails hang heavily from our belts and have to be put on the ground. Cicely feels the same way about it as I do, and never wants to stop, no matter how late it is.

We have big bowls of blueberries for supper, dusted ever so lightly with sugar. Pitchers of cream for those who can ignore calories. The next morning we have blueberry muffins.

I use this recipe:

Blueberry Muffins 2 cups flour, 3 teaspoons baking powder, 4 tablespoons sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 cup milk, 2 tablespoons melted shortening, 1 well beaten egg.

We eat most of our meals in August outdoors. It seems a shame to miss a single hour under the dreamy summer sky. The barbeque is in constant use. I love to have supper about sunset time, cooked over the fireplace and then, as the embers glow redly, sit and feel the cool of the evening coming softly over the meadows. There is a kind of quiet in a summer evening which is like nothing else in the world. It is quiet like an opening golden rose. The sky is the color of moonstone after the sun dips behind the green hills, and later on it is lilac and deep purple. Then the summer moon silvers everything over, and the stars unfold their petals, too.

Conversation ebbs away on such a night; people sit dreamily, the last flicker of fire lighting up a man's pipe, a woman's clasped hands, a child's eager eyes. Melody is a piece of night itself, and Esme and Tigger, who love the barbeque, sit happily on the stone ledge. Esmé's eyes are opal, Tigger's are topaz. We always linger until the damp mist rises from the swamp and the last ember falls apart.

The Book of Stillmeadow

Read an "Ideals Magazine" August column

Provided by Larry Jordan

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Gladys Taber: Page One / Gladys Taber: Two

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