It’s woolly thinking time

Today is the penultimate day of September 2024. Haven’t seen a hummingbird at the feeder all week. Wasps and/or hornets are about everywhere, building nests and being annoying. Temperatures have been running close to 20 degrees above normal this week past but are expected to become seasonable, or close to it, come mid-week, early October. This in a state that decades ago became famous for a Halloween blizzard. This morning I found a woolly bear showing four bands of ginger, of 13(?) total bands. It’s an unrepresentative sample size, but it may portend a winter thats more wintery than usual. Meanwhile, there’s at least half a dozen lilac bushes in the neighborhood that are in bloom.

woolly bear says winter will be ???

Photo by J. Harrington

In a typical year, we’d be looking toward peak leaf color over the next couple of weeks. It’s been very slow developing this year. September has been more like July, plus we keep discovering more lilac bushes in bloom. Birds and butterflies seem to be moving south, but that must be due to day length more than our weather. Did I mention all the lilacs in bloom? In September?

We aided and abetted our Granddaughter and her friends and relations celebrate a 4 year old's birthday last week. I had forgotten that just opening presents is considered as much fun as playing with or trying on what’s getting unwrapped, especially if there’s a big pile of presents to be unwrapped before we get to the birthday cake. There was a strong horsey theme since a certain 4 year old has been taking, and enjoying, riding lessons these days.

It looks like, with two minutes to go in today’s game and a nine point lead, the Vikings are going to beat Green Bay and start the season 4 and 0. Our football fan son will be gleeful. I’m still touchy having rooted for a team that’s lost the Superbowl four times. (Final today: Vikings 31 Green Bay 29)

I’ve been working, without as much success as I’d like, at letting go of expectations and living in the moment. With the weather changes and the constant revisions in technology and business practices, that seems wise but requires the retraining of a lifetime’s conditioning. I have a book on order that should arrive this coming week, written by Jenny Odell, titled How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. I’d been toying with reading it and, in one of the reviews I read, saw the mention of bioregionalism. I was hooked and look forward to reading about the combination.

The Woolly Bear

Along a silvan lane, you spy a critter
creeping with a mission, a woolly bear
fattened on autumn flora. So you crouch,
noting her triple stripes: the middle ginger,
each end as black as space. Her destination
is some unnoticed nook, a sanctuary
to settle in, greet the fangs of frost,
then freeze, wait winter out—lingering, lost
in dreams of summer, milkweed, huckleberry.
Though she’s in danger of obliteration
by wheel or boot, your fingers now unhinge her.
She bends into a ball of steel. No “ouch”
from bristles on your palm as you prepare
to toss her lightly to the forest litter.

She flies in a parabola, and lands
in leaves. Though she has vanished, both your hands
hold myriad tiny hairs, a souvenir
scattered like petals. When this hemisphere
turns warm again, she’ll waken, thaw, and feast
on shrubs and weeds (the bitterer the better)
then, by some wondrous conjuring, released
from larval life. At length she will appear
a moth with coral wings — they’ll bravely bear
her through a night of bats or headlight glare,
be pulverized like paper in a shredder,
or briefly flare in a world that will forget her.

by Martin J. Elster

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