10.10.13 Cool Days, Cooler Nights, Approaching the Time of Sleep, Soup and Slow

Cool days; cooler nights, almost but not quite rain as the enormous storm clouds blow their bluster elsewhere. And then finally, every week or so, and good fall soaking, the earth drinking it up, plants feeding upon it in preparation for their fall transition.

Farmers gathering the harvest, tractors slowly pulling loads of potato and corn and squash. Tobacco all picked and almost dry, farmstands thick with happily stopped local cars, 

and soon the roads will be filled to the brim with leaf-peepers come to relish the New England propensity for the fall colors, a last hurrah.


We dig out our socks and jackets and close the windows up by dinner time. Rustle around for hats just this morning, the pup's breath even a bit visible in a New Englander's home, reticence about turning on heat before whatever that certain date may be for you.....

Squash plants proliferating - Acorn squash, Butternut...gourds...

The huge Aster just warming up for their purple time of providing the very last meals and night shelter for cold tired bees of all kinds.  








The wild grasses producing the season's end seeds, called, of all lovely things, luminescents...the softly glistening tops of each grass, akin to the proud creation of a spider's egg sac, a squash plant's progeny. 

I catch sight of the morning sunlight spilling over the range and onto the conservation fields out my kitchen window. In my nightgown, I grab my camera and run out to capture the elusive light.

My feet seeped with the ground's dew, my breath a cool small cloud, I lean down to see if the camera can gather up the remarkable, shifting light as the earth does turn and the sun's light comes further every second. Every second as I stand there, feet coooolllddd, slight fall wind whistling through us all out there, I imagine the earth I stand upon, you stand upon, moving and the origin of this change of light. 

I lean down I kneel down and almost lay down, the dew seeping into nightgown, I peer closer at the soft shining field and its inhabitants, and there....there upon the luminescent...is a small spider. Tiny tiny spider. and its intricate web. Yes it is. Hmm. I sit up on my knees. I think. I turn and peer the field over, and there before me are thousands or more small luminescents, each with a spider and spider web. There they are. Surprise surprise. Neighbors.






























Did you ever read  the kid book, Dr. Seuss's ' Horton Hears a Who' growing up, or to children? Where he discovers one day that there is a universe of beings upon each and every clover, and he strains to protect this one small universe? 

Changed, I was, as a child, by the story. Oh, it was a bit much,and how do you step, and where, and all that, soon overcome by childish enthusiasm and the practical necessity of getting on with life. But I did not forget. That we are brethren. The universe over. Relational. Parallel lives. Each with value. Still, I delight. In the universes of life..on grasses. Beneath humus. 

So here I am, with these thousands of small intricate webs of small intricate spiders.

Do they call? Sing? Strum? So many species do so many things that poor old humans do not detect, so we assume we are the top of the food chain, and who really cares about anyone else? I watch as well as I can for a moment, taking it all in; then return back inside, sopping wet, smiling widely to my beloved who glances at me, taken aback but just for a second, then laughs and embraces my soggyness. 

I turn my head, just for a second, in his embrace, peer out the row of ground level windows, and the light has filled the field now; the vision of the grasses and dew gone from my sight, but not from their existence. 

So many types of  spiders making their elaborate brilliant webs each evening, selecting mates, spinning and then protecting precious egg sacs,

                                                                                                                                                                                                          as night air comes weighted with dew

and Eagles and Red Tail Hawks and Harris Hawks overhead call each to each, soaring over the ancient range and the powerful ever present Connecticut-

our bodies and trees and animals and microbes all seamlessly moving in the seasonal dance that leads from the last vestiges of summer ,

spinning us in their arms through Autumn ,

and trundling us right down into yet another winter's time 











of soup and warm socks and early nights and all the essential recharging,

like wise bears and turtles and trees,

that recharges your deep wise strength and takes you by the hand

back toward Spring light,

rejuvenated by your slow time and ready to expand and grow once again.