S’no way to enjoy autumn

Tomorrow’s weather may include morning snow showers. Future overnight low temperatures will regularly be at or below freezing. Today we plugged in the heater for the bird bath. It will be at least another month, maybe two, before we start putting out suet feeders. We want to be sure the local bear population is snug in their winter beds before we hang such temptations.

Oct. 9, 2016: ice covered

Photo by J. Harrington

In what is likely the last time this year the front yard gets mowed, I discovered a dismaying number of mole tunnels in the soft, surprisingly moist feeling underfoot, soil. If we had a barn, I’d be sure we had several barn cats that might also catch an occasional mole. Mice continue to make the mistake after sneaking into the house and garage of nibbling on the peanut butter in the traps. I’ve not found a comparably successful strategy for managing moles. The one mole trap I keep moving and resetting seems to do no more than give the moles a good laugh.

Sans segue, I’ve noticed, over the past several years, comparable increases in the volatility of our weather, the stock market, and our politics. It’s reached a point at which I have no idea what’s coming next. Ordinarily, this would cause me untoward amounts of fretting. I’m working hard on an alternative to that unproductive mode of being. I’m doing my best to address what’s in front of me at the moment and telling the remainder of my worries to “take a number!” It took most of us to mess up the climate, the biosphere and our politics. No matter how effective I might be, or how hard I might try, one of me isn’t going to compensate for all of us. Meanwhile, I intend to enjoy at least some of what’s left of my life, which I can’t do if I’m always fretting.

First Snow

By Arthur Sze

A rabbit has stopped on the gravel driveway:

           imbibing the silence,

           you stare at spruce needles:

                                          there's no sound of a leaf blower, 

                                          no sign of a black bear;

a few weeks ago, a buck scraped his rack

           against an aspen trunk;

           a carpenter scribed a plank along a curved stone wall.

                        You only spot the rabbit's ears and tail:

when it moves, you locate it against speckled gravel,

but when it stops, it blends in again;

           the world of being is like this gravel:

                        you think you own a car, a house,

                        this blue-zigzagged shirt, but you just borrow these things. 

Yesterday, you constructed an aqueduct of dreams

                        and stood at Gibraltar,

                                                but you possess nothing.

Snow melts into a pool of clear water;

     and, in this stillness,

                        starlight behind daylight wherever you gaze. 

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