Continued

I am alone with nature,
With the soft September day;
The lifting hills above me,
With goldenrod are gay.
Across the fields of ether
Flit butterflies at play;
And cones of garnet sumac
Glow down the country way.

The autumn dandelion
Beside the roadway burns;
Above the lichened boulders
Quiver the plumed ferns.
The cream-white silk of the milkweed
Floats from its sea-green pod;
From out the mossy rock-seams
Flashes the goldenrod.

--Mary Clemmer Ames

The Stillmeadow road is edged now with gold. From the picket fence I look up the hill to the mailbox and see the wave of goldenrod, accented with the purple of wild asters. It gives me a sense of sadness, lovely as it is, for goldenrod is the forerunner of the bright, cool autumn which will make our valley a blaze of glory. Hal Borland tells me he once counted 3,023 individual flowers on a spray of goldenrod. I don't know whether I was more impressed by the number or by Hal's matchless patience. I would have given up by the time I got to 45. And when Hal went on to say that with a magnifying glass he studied the individual florets and found there were 20,000 in an average plume, it seemed unbelievable. What invention of man could be more intricate than a spray of this country weed?

Now that so much of the woodlands has been destroyed, I sometimes wonder just how many dwellers there are in my woods and swamps. Most of the deer have gone and this is a sad loss. We used to stop the car on Jeremy swamp road while two or three deer crossed over. The movement of a deer is like a madrigal, and a wobbly fawn adds a grace note. I always wanted  my own personal deer, not to pen up but just to know. But then I have always wanted a seal. Probably the reason the swamp is what I love best in my forty acres is that it is a haven for wildlife, from ruffed grouse to cardinals. The bushes and plants stand with their feet in water and somehow a brook runs in one end and vanishes. Cranberries grow at one edge and they are big as birds eggs, pale gold in color tinged with red, and sweet as honey. you have to crawl to reach them, being very careful not to get too far in the bog. I fell in once and was dragged out by Jill with difficulty. But we knew we had no right to invade the swamp in the first place. It belongs to itself, not to man, and it goes about its important business of preserving what we call the balance of nature.

At the end of the swamp, a narrow road turns right to the house. The giant sugar maples that surround it are spreading a deep green canopy above the slant roof and I look up at them and tell them that the first swamp maple is turning. Whether they believe me or not, I do not know. They are inscrutable. They are also very independent. sometimes the biggest one at the corner of the yard will be summer green while the one back where the barn burned is flaming with glory. Why?

Weather conditions are the same for all of them, one is no more sheltered than another, and they are the same age, judging by their size. I like to think one tree decides to keep summer a bit longer and one impetuously responds to the tide of incoming autumn. Trees are not remotely like people, but I reflect that I know some people who have never let summer go and others who begin to think winter thoughts in July. Perhaps it is all temperament.

Stillmeadow Calendar

On a warm September afternoon, I like to go down to the old mill beyond Steve and Olive's house. The mill was once used for grinding flour during colonial days. now it is abandoned, but the water spills over the rocky dam just as always. A cool breath comes from the old mill wheel and from the damp floor of the old millhouse. I often wish someone would operate it again, for water - ground meal is so superior. We have to get our flour from Vermont, but it's worth it for the smell of a loaf of warm bread just out of the oven is utterly satisfying. All of summer seems to be in the warm buttery slices.

Inside our own mill, long given over to spiders, there yet remains a smell of wheat. It is shadowy and quiet, and full of the past. I can almost see the men who used to come here, and the women in their neat gowns. Possibly the miller was too old to go to war and leaned in this dark doorway to watch troops go by. But they had heavy hearts. The miller must have wondered whether there would be any grain at all to grind, come another year. It was hard, too, not to be able to grind any grain for families suspected of being Tories. I suspect the miller, having worked a lifetime with the basic food of life, slipped a little extra flour in a sack and just happened to drop it off at a Tory house on his way home. nobody would be the wiser.

The water wheel is mossy. Light filters through the roof where the beams have gone. but the stream flows steadily on, just as it always has. The pool below the mill is deep and clear, and small boys fish in it. It is a pity they only think of bread as something squshy in a waxed wrapper. Fishing, however, is not changed. I hope it never will be. A small boy needs a bamboo pole, a hook, a worm.

Stillmeadow Sampler

September is a special grace for those of us who face a long, bitter New England winter. Summer's lease has been all too short; now it is over. Nature is at her mysterious work of turning leaves, putting gardens to bed, signaling the wildlife to prepare for the heavy snows. Those that hibernate are fortunate, it seems to me, for they just move into their burrows for a long dream. Those that do not must, like summer birds, migrate or eke out a hard existence in the zero temperatures. since I cannot hibernate or migrate, I lay aside a store of emergency foods, hunt up my boots and storm clothes, and ask the furnace man to clean the oil burner and check the fireplace flue.

How good it is to come into the house at teatime and enjoy the heartwarming sight of the hearth fire again! I sit beside it and reflect that I may as well throw away that list of "Things to Do This Summer." I made it in April, and not a great deal of it can be crossed off now. but there's always time to make another one on a snowbound winter day!

The harvest moon is heavy with gold; the stars are polished diamonds. The dogs and I walk out onto the lawn; a fox barks in the woods, otherwise the night is wondrously still. Beautiful pale smoke floats up from the ancient chimney, and I think of Thoreau's words: "There is no remedy for love but to love." That's how I feel about September, and wish I could share the tranquility of this night with my unknown neighbors all over the world. If you had the right plug-in, you would be hearing nice music now.

Stillmeadow Calendar

Back to September, part one

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