The leaves they are a falling….
I’d hoped the wind would hold off on this sunny day but it looks like it’s raining leaves as I look out the window. Some trees are bare this morning where yesterday they were covered in red maple leaves. I just want a moment of sun, calm and colour, together, for one last fall paddle down the lake. I’ll even take cloudy, calm and colour at this point!
Our kilometer road in is a kaleidoscope of Fall colours. The swamps have the reds and burgundies, the paper birch are the bright yellows, the maples range from green to orange, yellow and red, absolute wonder at the striking variety and shades of Autumn. But it all fades so quickly. Damn! We have a friend, who loves to walk quickly, for exercise, I just can’t do it, how could you not look up and marvel at the beauty. You miss so much by not slowing down and savoring this season.
Walking out to get the mail takes me awhile! Ha! All the curves in the road, there are swamp edges to tromp off into, if tromp is a word, if not, it’s one now! Trying to get that perfect angle with the all the reds and not falling into the rather odiferous swamp, wow, they amaze me. There is one maple every year that bursts out in yellow with red edges, astounding! Worth wet toes any day!
Is it so special because it is so short a time we get to see this or is it simply mind bogglingly beautiful, or all of the above. I feel the same way about the various greens in the Spring. It isn’t just green, it’s a myriad of shades of green from bright lime new green to older dark shades and everything in between. I love colour. How they mix, or clash, how they harmoniously dance together in a waltz or hit you over the head with head banging hard rock tones! Ha! Colour and music, go together, but out in the forest now it’s very very quiet. The rustle of leaves in the breeze, and occasional chickadee, everyone else has headed South, just the stalwart black and whites, the tuxedo birds remain!
So there are a few shades of beige there as well! The Goldfinches have vanished but they’ll be back, and the red polls will also arrive. I may miss them!
It doesn’t mean I haven’t been out on the lake, I did get a spin in the bay before the clouds moved in late one afternoon. The reflections were so beautiful, and again, that quiet. I heard the Barred Owl way in the distance and we had a single Loon swimming about, he/she gave a few sad wails before sunset and then it flew off, flapping its wings for what seemed forever as the webbed feet look like they are doing a Fred Flintstone car acceleration!
I missed the Loon family, maybe next year we’ll have a successful couple start a family. It is disheartening reading the World Wildlife report this week: Earth is losing biodiversity at a rate seen only during mass extinctions. Unsustainable human activity is pushing the planet’s natural systems that support life on Earth to the edge. As a result, global populations of vertebrate species have declined by an average of 60 per cent in less than 50 years. I had to stop reading at one point I felt so very sad and powerless. I keep thinking if just a few people see these pictures of this beauty it can change minds, buy less, recycle more, want less. We can be happy with less. Enjoy the tiniest things in life, a bug, a mushroom, stop and look and marvel. Cherish every smile, every hug, these cost the world nothing. Think before you HAVE to have a new this, or a new that, can you make do with what you have? We are seeing the end of an era and I hope for the sake of the following generations we have not already started it down a disaterous path it can’t return from. Humans don’t learn from their mistakes, it seems we are fated to make the same errors over and over, until we are gone. I hope something remains other than old concrete blocks and a discarded cell phone found petrified in a piece of rock…Ha! Think about it…
My grandfather once told me there was no shame in getting your hands dirty to make a living. I worked retail at first. Long hours, often seven days a week. I wanted to do well. As manager I unloaded trucks alongside everyone else in my crew. My goal was never to ask anyone to do something I wouldn’t. I did get a bit grimy, not like the farming we did later in life where you had hay in every crack in your body, every crack, I swear to you, I crapped hay after loading and unloading those hay wagons. Never has bathing been such a luxury! Now it seems no one can find anyone to do these jobs. Their Grandfathers obviously didn’t tell them what mine told me.
Mike is a bit worried how the Traveling Mewberries will take to riding the roads once again. It’s been two years and more since they’ve sat in the truck overseeing their servants. I think they’ll be fine, a new feliway has been purchased and rescue remedy is at hand so hopefully we can keep the first day carsickness to a minimum, and wait until breakfast has settled before we leave on that tiny windy road! Maybe I should wear a giant plastic rainsheet, the roll of paper towels will be on hand. Just like when I was a kid, first day at sea was always the worst after being in port for awhile! Lurp…..
I have thought of every conceivable way to take the little red canoe with me, everyone deserves a vacation but it just won’t fit! It will get a good polish, pat and wax though before hibernation! The red bench will miss it but they’ll be reunited in the early Spring! For now, as we wait for tires, our last necessity, I’ll enjoy those early foggy mornings and wisps of pastel colours coloring the sky but it isn’t goodbye, it is see you later. Saludos amigos!
