Not ten days in and the leaves have begun to change. Wasn't May just yesterday? Didn't the garden just go in? When did the sunflowers get to be six feet tall? My inner time clock says it's still Spring, yet there was a red and yellow maple leaf on the front lawn. That was yesterday, too. It's not that one can look at the mountains and see colors. Not yet. It's still very green. Goldenrod, tall and yellow, bobs and weaves in the breeze. Purple loosestrife juts up all over the place. Queen Anne's :Lace seems to spread her canopies up and down the road. Pull up a clump, scrape the root with your fingernail, put to nose. Smells just like a carrot, doesn't it? A far-sighted farmer way back in time bred it to be just that.
If you visited you'd think it was simply a beautiful summer day, and, yes, it would be. However, people who live here are aware of subtle change and know that the blue jays, a winter bird, are maybe two weeks away. The air smells crisp and clean. Pelts become thick and full. Spots on fawns begin to fade.Blackberries are here. Apples coming soon. The bears will be up in those trees. Deer are scraping off their velvet. You can see where they walk by a patch of bark rubbed off the trunk of a sapling. Three more weeks and the fire bush will be bright red. Three more weeks and summer is gone. Where are the snows of yesteryear? someone once asked. If you live here you know they're on the way. And the tomatoes haven't even come in yet.
If you live here you know the change never stops. You may not see it but it happens anyway, and eventually -- even though you had no hand in it nor will you have a hand in it -- what happened will sink in. One day the grass is a trifle more brittle. One day the trees, their proud chests swollen with summer leaves, are a shade less green. The clover dies out. The thyme comes in. My forehead now sports an age spot. It wasn't there, and then it was. And is. If you don't change you die, although you're going to die whether you change or not. But the journey! Oh, yes, the journey is so much more interesting when you don't know for sure where you're going or even where you are. Call me a Luddite, but if I had my way I'd ban GPS systems. It lops off yet another innate, natural skill: the ability to find our way back. I've been lost in Alaska. I've been lost in a rain forest. Hell, I've been lost on the mountain outside my back door. But just because you lose the trail doesn't mean that's the end of the trail, something a tracker told me a long time ago. His way would not be my way but here's what he told me: when you're lost sit down, settle down, stare at the ground and breathe deeply. Then you look up at the sky and ask for help. You'll find your way. As I said, not really my way, but it sure worked for him. I've found that if I stay calm and keep walking down hill I'll eventually get where I'm going. Or somewhere else. But, not to worry. I will get there.
In the woods and mountains where we live, we know there is a reason for everything, even when it's not readily apparent. This past spring there were more mice than usual. Then I noticed more rabbits than usual. There were also far more turkey poults than I've seen before. How come? A neighbor told me that ruffed grouse, partridges, were back. He'd seen a lot of them up at the tree line of Rusk Mountain. How's that? Their numbers have been down for years. As preface to my answer, let me explain that in all the decades I've lived here I've seen a fox maybe four times. Yet, this past spring there were foxes all over the place. Two dens within walking distance of each other. One den is across the creek on a dead neighbor's property. The other is in another neighbor's abandoned barn. Four times in thirty-one years? How about a dozen times these past two weeks? Sleek. Black noses. Red fur. Bushy tails. I watched an unusually long line of poults follow their mother hen into the woods, and a couple of days later saw the little foxes returning to the barn from that same trail. Haven't seen the turkey there since. Was there more food because there were more foxes? Were there more foxes because of all the extra food? I don't know why. I just know what.
I think I'm beginning to ramble, so I'm just gonna stop.
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