Welcome All Hallows Eve

This week we usher in the scariest night of the year: All Hallows Eve or, as we have come to know it, Halloween. What is it about this night that changes the very air around us? Mostly it's the old stories, the traditions and festivities that have come down to us from generation after generation. 

Have you ever gone out on Halloween night, especially out into nature away from the noise and activity, and just listened? I expect you would find that the sounds and sensations that flow into your experience are no different than any other night. Mother Nature did not change the natural flow of things just for Trick-or-Treaters. The creatures of the night are no more scary on this night than on any other. They just continue to go about their business like reliable employees on the night shift. We are the ones who have made them the stuff of scary stories. The truth of the matter is that nature has equipped the creatures we associate with the night with special sensory equipment in order for them to survive. Animals like bats, who probably have the worst reputation thanks to Dracula, have a special built-in sonar system that they use to find their way around because they do not see well in the daylight. Other creatures of the night either do not do well in the heat of the day, or wait until dark because their food choices consist of other night-time creatures. Owls hunt mostly at night as do foxes and raccoons. Nothing scary about that. It's all just part of the life cycle.

Being an outdoor lover, I have spent many evenings in my life sitting outside or by an open window at night, especially when I lived in the country, and just listened. There is a beauty to the silence of an evening after all the humans have gone to bed, and a tickle of curiosity when one hears a tiny rustle in the leaves, or senses almost silent wings in flight. Even the breeze sounds softer. I've never found it to be scary, not on Halloween night or any other night. I've always found it to be just another of Mother Nature's fascinating creations to explore.

Just so I don't miss out on the Halloween fun, however, I will do what this apartment dweller (no kids want to climb three flights of stairs to knock on doors even for candy) does every Halloween night: pop some popcorn, turn out the lights, and watch old episodes of "Ghost Hunters," my favorite spooky TV show. Then maybe, after all the kids are home in bed, I just might open up that window and give a listen.

And so it is.

Autumn's Endless Childhood

On Saturday my "almost" (birthday is in 2 weeks) 10 year-old grandson and I were walking back from a Holiday Bazaar and Craft Fair at our church. It was a perfect Autumn day and the colors of the trees against a deep blue sky was beyond beautiful. A carpet of leaves, left there after the rain and wind storm of the day before, crunched under our feet. Neither of us was paying much attention to what was going on around us. We were too busy looking for treasures at our feet to pick up and take home. 

What is it about childhood, Autumn, and the overwhelming desire to collect the leaves? I don't know any child (or any child-at-heart adult for that matter) who can resist the urge to collect a bouquet of Autumn's offerings. It's as though Mother Nature put them there for us to take what She has created and create something of our own. It's a right of passage like learning to ride a bike and our first day of school. Leaf collecting is part of our heritage, a gift from nature to remind us that, while everything changes - the trees as well as us - we can take those changes and make something beautiful out of it. 

Right now the leaves are drying on the bench by my front door. The next time my grandson comes over, we can take our treasures and do something fun with them. Perhaps we can do leaf rubbings, or trace them to make paper leaves, or start a scrapbook, or any number of things. It doesn't really matter what we do with them as long as we take what nature dropped at our feet and make it beautiful again.

And so it is. 

Country Perfume

On Saturday I attended the Harvest Open House at a local country farm store just outside of town called Country Wagon Produce. It is situated close enough to stores and schools to be convenient, but far enough out of a more urban setting to feel like what it is ... a country store on a country road. I love to visit this place and browse their shelves of homemade jams, jellies, dried spices (all from herbs grown right there on the farm), baked goods, fresh produce (also grown right there) and handmade items of every kind from soaps, to scarves, to household decor and more. Outside the store are baskets and bins filled with apples, pears, squashes, gourds, and, or course, pumpkins of every size. I could visit this place every day and never grow tired of it.

On the day of the annual Harvest Open House, there is food, music and fun things for the whole family including a hay ride, a magician, animals from the local Zoomobile, and even a giant sling shot where you can send a less-than-perfect apple or pear sailing across the field to try and hit the target. The one thing that caught my attention the most that day, however, was what filled my nostrils and my heart, what I refer to as the perfume of the country.

Even though it was raining the day we went, I didn't mind. For me there is something intoxicating about the smell of the rain on the grass and the fresh cut hay, and on the barrels of apples and pears. There is a scent from the nearby river that calls to me of days spent sitting on a blanket beside it and having a picnic with my very first grandchild when she was only a toddler, watching the ducks and geese glide by. The freshly fallen leaves have a smell all their own that announces the season, and the aroma of wood-smoke from the fireplaces and wood stoves around the area call to mind chilly with a mug of hot soup at my elbow and some yarn and a crochet hook in my hand. No other season's perfume calls to me as this one does, nor makes me as homesick for my old country home.

I expect I will return there from time to time to stock up on my supply of cooking herbs before they close for the winter after Christmas, and to grab a loaf of freshly made raisin or pumpkin bread, or just to stand outside to breathe in the those memories of home. Perhaps one day if I'm lucky they will move from the realm of memory to the realm of reality once again.

And so it is.

Waking Up To Autumn

Autumn finally arrived here overnight on Friday ... literally. On Thursday the high for the day was 83 degrees. On Friday it was still in the 70's but the rain was moving in. Overnight Friday into Saturday it rained and rained, and when I woke up on Saturday morning the temperature was 34 degrees, the heat had kicked on, and when I opened the curtains, the tips of the trees around my building were sporting vibrant hints of color against a brilliant, Autumn-blue sky!

I always feel as if I wait the whole year for Autumn to come, and when it's as late as it was this year, I get impatient. It's my all-time favorite season of the year and I just wished it lasted a little longer, or at least as long as winter seems to last. The temperature is just right for jeans and sweatshirts, the air tingles with the promise of pumpkins, and the colors, well, the colors are often beyond words. It's as if Mother Nature were helping us to record the beauty our minds to hold us over during the dark days of winter. I know it feels a bit like the movie, "Groundhog's Day," but sometimes I do wish it could be Autumn all year long. 

Wishing away our days for something outside of our control does not serve us. I think that's why Mother Nature created four different seasons. She wanted us to learn those things that would serve us as we evolved, things like patience, growth, and having goals or dreams to name a few. Can you imagine not having enough spring and summer to grow our food, or give baby birds enough  time to grow in their shell? And what about us? Which one of us would like to see our grey hair and wrinkles show up years ahead of time by wishing life moved faster? Wishing away our time hoping to change things that we have no control over is the same as wishing away our lives. That time can be better spent on finding ways to bring joy into our lives ... like enjoying Mother Nature's Fall Art Exhibit for as long as she keeps it hung out there. Now that's something we can not only hope for, but achieve.

And so it is. 

Marketing Advice From Mother Nature

In all the years I worked in marketing and Public Relations, no campaign, not even with a huge advertising budget to work with, ever came close to what Mother Nature can put on with a snap of her fingers. By far, I would have to say that the most popular and celebrated of those has to be Autumn. If you asked a dozen people what their favorite season was, I would bet that more than half would agree.

It's not just the colors, spectacular as they are. She gave these colors to the great artistic masters of the world, yet none of them could match what she was able to do with them. The blue of a sunny Autumn sky is a blue that knocks your socks off, so that the visit a few weeks ago from that lovely brown hawk that flew past my window stood out in stark contrast. An Autumn sun glows like no other season's sun and makes the shadows it casts more dramatic. The other day my attention was caught by that favorite sound of Autumn that I constantly rave about, the sound of the geese in motion. This time, however, the sound was unusually loud and when I went to the window, I found that they had changed their normal flight path and were flying directly over my roof! They were low enough for me to get a good look at their beautiful forms, but the most dramatic sight was their shadow, deep and powerful, that flowed over the shingled roof next door like a special effects show! The sights, the sounds, the colors, it all went to make a masterpiece that I doubt even Michelangelo could beat, nor could the best and the brightest on Madison Avenue come up with a more attention-getting, memorable ad.

Whenever I find myself caught up in that distinctly human pursuit of perfection, of being "better-than" the self-created competition born in our own minds, I have only to go outside and look around me. It doesn't take me long to be brought back down to earth and be reminded that the only perfection in the world comes at the hands of Mother Nature, God's Director of Marketing, the one who took all the time in the world to get it right, and is still at work each and every moment. Now that's dedication to a job! Would any of us be as willing to give our lives in the pursuit of our passions? It's certainly something to ponder.

And so it is. 

Remembering To Look Up

One of the features I love the best about my tiny apartment is the big window over my desk that looks out on a tree-lined street of older, well-kept homes that leads to the green hills beyond. There is plenty of open sky and lots of small, non-human neighbors to watch and, especially at this time of year, beginning to keep a lookout for the first signs of the colors of Fall beginning to touch the tips of the leaves.

On Saturday I was sitting at my desk reading emails while my 6 year old great-grandson was sitting on the love seat playing an educational video game on the PBS Kids website. Suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of brown soar past my window. Looking up quickly I just made it in time to see a huge hawk circle a tree across the street and disappear among its branches. I called to Xavier to bring his handy-dandy binoculars which he always brings to my house when he visits to do some bird and insect watching with me. As he was scrambling to find where he'd put them down last, the blur of brown erupted from the tree and landed on the very top of a very tall telephone pole. The pole was almost the same color as the hawk and, while he sat absolutely still, he was hard to see at first. Finally Xavier located his binoculars and together we took in this magnificent sight. In the almost three years that I have been living here, I have never seen a hawk here in this residential area. The river is only a few blocks south of here and that is where one is more likely to see birds or prey and a host of animals and fish, a much better hunting ground, one would think, than a row of houses and concrete. In any case, there he was in all his glory. He sat for a while, barely even moving his head, then with a sudden woosh of his very large wings, he took off down the street and headed for the hills in the distance. He did not put in another appearance that day or any day since. Xavier was thrilled to have witnessed such a sight (the most exciting thing he'd ever seen in his whole life, as he put it). I was just glad that I had looked away from my laptop in time to capture the moment for the both of us.

I have to wonder how many magnificent things we miss when our heads are constantly bent down and our eyes glued to a screen. How many beautiful, moving, amazing things, the ones that go on around us all the time, do we miss because we think what is down there is more important and fulfilling than what is up there. An email cannot compare to the sight of that mighty bird in flight, in an area where he would not normally have been seen. A Facebook post can't compare to a brilliant sunrise or sunset. An Instagram message can't replace the thrill of a flock of geese in flight across the sky in a perfect formation, or bald eagle soaring, or bunnies playing tag on the neighbors lawn in the wee hours of the morning. Nothing down there can teach us anything more important about life than we can learn by lifting our eyes up and seeing what Mother Nature can teach us about living a life filled with wonder. Why see the world second hand when you can see it up close and in person?

I will be keeping my eyes open and watchful to see if our new visitor comes back. In the meantime, I think I will turn off my screen for now and watch the show that is going on outside for a while ... and I don't even have to pay for a hook-up or a monthly fee!

And so it is.

Voices in the Mist

In that early morning moment, between sleep and waking, I heard them. Softly at first, a far-away, muffled sound. Then more clearly ... there! There it is again! I wasn't dreaming. I sat up in bed and looked out of the window. A thick fog had descended over the hills beyond and wafted over the street below like a gauzy curtain. I got up, grabbed my glasses and moved closer to the window. As if on cue there was a parting in the mist like a curtain being pulled back on a stage, and there they were: about 20 or 30 geese flying in that perfect "V" that only they can do. Their voices called out to each other as they moved across the sky. It was official: Fall was here. I don't care what it says on the calendar or how high the temperature is still likely to go for at least the next few weeks. When the geese are on the move, Fall is right behind them.

Some years ago during a team-building exercise at my place of employment, we read about geese as an example of how to work together. All the noise and cacophony that geese send out as they journey to warmer climates is their way of encouraging each other to keep going. If one falls behind, or becomes ill and can't fly, one or more will land with them so that they are not alone as they rest and heal. When the leader gets tired, someone else will automatically move up and take his place. Moment by moment, day by day, they cheer each other on. That is how they have survived since the beginning, by working together as a team for the good of all.

I love the sound of the geese. To some it may be noise, but to me it is music. It is the music of Fall, of brilliant foliage, of fresh-picked apples and pumpkin flavored everything! Of crisp days dressed in comfy sweats visiting the pumpkin farm and enjoying the blessings of the harvest. It is also a sound that reminds me of what can be accomplished when we work together for the good of all. I firmly believe that if we all just stood still long enough to study the behavior of our animal relations we would find examples of how to make this a better world. In this case, it is a community that cheers you on, that reminds you "great job, keep going, we've got your back," and that stays with you when you need a break. It's called family. It's called community. It's called peace.

I know there will be many more early mornings ahead when the music of the geese will come through the morning mist and sing me awake. I am grateful for them all. It's like they are calling to me to get up, keep going, good job! When you think about it, it's way better than an alarm clock, wouldn't you agree?

And so it is.