The music of Autumn

Today is close to a classic and perfect North Country Autumn day. The breeze is a little strong but all the other seasonal attributes are there: sunshine, temperatures, leaf colors. In fact, we're more than halfway through meteorological Autumn and on election day will be halfway through astronomical Autumn. We celebrated by pulling some more buckthorn while listening to folk music on our smart phone. By the time we were finished today's work on land restoration we felt like a rejuvenated hippie.

Canada geese on the move

Photo by J. Harrington

We find we're restless at about this time each year. Are you? Hummingbirds and monarch butterflies have headed South, as have many of Summer's songbirds. Waterfowl will probably hang around as long as they can find food and open water, then they'll pack it in. If our road were a trout stream, we'd have sworn we saw a hatch of tricos today. There were swarms of tiny, tiny grayish flies, fruit flies?, midges?, hovering along the edge of the road when we walked the dogs today. They reminded us that this Winter we need to get our act together and take a shot at Winter trout fishing. We also need to get out gear reorganized.

One of the "restless" songs we used to listen to as we headed off on hunting and fishing trips was/is Willie Nelson's classic On the Road Again. Among other Autumn songs that complement our restless feelings are:

• Urge for Going (one of Joni Mitchell's masterpieces)


• Gentle on my Mind (one of John Hartford's most popular)


• Who Knows Where the Time Goes (Sandy Denny's song first beautifully covered by Judy Collins)

Season of the Witch

Photo by J. Harrington

Later this month, we can enjoy Halloween while we listen to Donovan's Season of the Witch. Then next month brings a somber interlude with Gordon Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald before we head over the river and through the woods to listen to a Thanksgiving Song sung by Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Music

By Juhan Liiv

Translated from the Estonian by H.L. Hix & Jüri Talvet

Read the translator's notes

It must be somewhere, the original harmony,

somewhere in great nature, hidden.

Is it in the furious infinite,

in distant stars’ orbits,

is it in the sun’s scorn,

in a tiny flower, in treegossip,

in heartmusic’s mothersong

or in tears?

It must be somewhere, immortality,

somewhere the original harmony must be found:

how else could it infuse 

the human soul,

that music?

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