November 2: First snow

Wind whipping tree boughs
snow on perfect gold leaves
even the cat's anxious

October 26: Clarry Hill

Spent this afternoon up on Clarry Hill in Union, surrounded by blueberry barrens, watching hawks soaring southward over the coastal mountains.

 

Kestrel hovering

Burnished fields, wind picking up

That's my heart out there

 

Posted with Blogsy

October 25: Greenery

Under a heap of leaves

pot of chives still green

still pungent

Posted with Blogsy

October 13: Autumn day trip

A day of sparrows
in fields going to seed
leaves red and falling

October 10: Color

Autumn leaves--

lost in thought, I drive for miles

without noticing.

Posted with Blogsy

October 16: Rustle

Something rustles
in the leaves. Mist on the river
turns to rain.

October 25: Witch-hazel

On a short lunch break walk through the woods along the river, we came upon a flowering witch-hazel tree. No, this is not some confused tree adversely affected by global climate change. This fall bloomer is right on schedule, its small, yellow-green flowers emerging from the tree's slender, bare branches almost magically, life sprouting from something seemingly dead (or at least dormant). The branches are also ornamented by what must be last year's dried seed pods, little cupped wings.

To come upon this tree in fall, blossoming when everything around it, even its own foliage, is fallen and dying--is perhaps the one, last saving grace of autumn. A hurricane is due next week that will take care of any bright and lingering leaves, and then it's the long, dark slide into winter...

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

There's no bravery
in these late-blooming flowers--
that's just what they do.

October 15: Spray of sparrows

Sparrows still linger in the fields and along the roadside. As I was driving today, sparrows scattered on either side of my car, their plumage blending perfectly with the sepias, ochres, and umbers of the weedy verge. They're subtly gathering the season's last fruits, the seeds of withering grasses and wildflowers. How close, this time of year, the convergence of beauty and mortality.  

As my car passes, 

spray of late-season sparrows. 

A friend's mother has died.

October 25: Just like Colorado

Looking out my office window today, a glowing golden poplar caught my eye. I was reminded of autumn aspen groves in Colorado--the almost ethereal sight of round leaves like gold coins shining against a backdrop of many straight pale tree trunks. As I was thinking this, I commented to a co-worker, "Look at that one beautiful tree out there." "I was just thinking that it reminded me of Colorado," she replied. I had to laugh. I guess once you've experienced such a sight, it resonates throughout the rest of your experiences of the natural world.

Western light reflects
on poplar leaves, reminds me
of aspens, things past.

October 11: Sumac

As I drove on an errand on this perfect, sunny autumn afternoon, stereo loud, I exclaimed to myself each time I passed a particularly stunning set of trees sporting fall colors. The garish colors matched the volume of my music and my elevated spirits. Roadside stands of sumacs in particular stood out, their long, arched pennants of leaves a deep, rich red.

If you look at the patchwork of colors that makes up a fall forest, you can often tell what species are in the mix. Poplar and birch leaves are yellow coins, maple leaves are yellow-orange-bright red hands, oak leaves are red-brown hands, beech leaves are yellow-brown flags, needles of the tamarack--the only deciduous conifer--form yellow-gold tufts. What at first glance looks like a random riot of color really reflects a certain order of things. But it's easy to overlook, amazed as we are by the breath-taking transformation of our woods, the trees' last hurrah before snow falls.

October's untamed:
red manes and tails of sumacs,
one black crow, roadside.

November 13: Emma's World

My almost 17-year-old cat Emma, while still going strong in many ways, has serious arthritis in her hindquarters which hampers her movements and makes her walk with a sort of sideways-slipping sway. Because she spends a lot of time lying around with her hind legs sprawled uselessly behind her, the other day my mother jokingly called her "Christina's World" after the famous Andrew Wyeth painting.

So Emma's activities today were cause for pleasure. While she's an indoor cat on principle, now that she's old and slow (though not as slow as you'd think), I sometimes let her hang out in the back yard with me for short, supervised outings. On this beautiful Indian summer afternoon, I set up a tv tray and chair so I could sit in the sun on the back porch and read over the proofs of my husband's second novel. Emma came out with me and explored the leafy back yard under my watchful eye. She tromped around in the leaves for quite a while, sniffing everything, undaunted by her awkward gait. She was more active than I've seen her in a long time. She even chased a twig I dragged past her.

Later, after some lunch inside, we went back out to the porch to take full advantage of this weather. She curled up tightly on my lap and napped while I read the latest New Yorker and drank a hot mug of chai latte. The river, dark and riffled, rushed past. Piles of leaves skittered and shifted. Chickadees flitted by on their way to the bird feeder. At one point Emma awoke and watched with interest as a neighbor's cat blithely walked through the yard and right past us, then she curled back up under my arm for more sleep. I held her in a close embrace, feeling keenly in those moments the brevity of the time we have left together. 

Emma and I have been together since before I met my husband. Childless, I have doted on this strange and often ornery little creature for 16 years. So I was especially grateful for us to be able to share these few hours together, with both of us simply enjoying the moment and each other's company, recharged by the late autumn sunlight.

Old cat, piles of leaves,

last warm days of November--

we share the sunlight.

PS: As I wrote this entry at my desk, Emma came over and indicated she wanted to get into my lap. After I boosted her up, I thought she'd curl up and sleep as usual, but instead she sat upright on my knees, alertly watching the screen the whole time I was typing. I told her I was writing about her, and I like to fool myself into thinking she understood.

October 17: Ragged Mountain Brunch

A perfect fall morning, which was lucky for a group of nine of us who'd planned to ride the Snow Bowl chairlift up Ragged Mountain to enjoy a bagel brunch at the top. With backpacks loaded up with goodies, we slowly rode the lift in pairs, enjoying the fall color that seemed to have miraculously spread over the landscape since the previous days' storm. At the top of the lift, we gathered on a ledge with our decadent spread, which included a box of Rock City coffee, orange juice, bagels of all kinds from the Bagel Cafe, cream cheese, smoked salmon, various jams (including one made from some exotic Japanese citrus), Nutella, lemon curd, some ingeniously wrapped fried (and home-grown) eggs, apples, and chocolate hazelnut espresso cake.

After such a filling moveable feast, is it any wonder that we felt the need to hike a bit further up the mountain? Our hike was short but rigorous (and a bit muddy, given that more than four inches of rain fell on Friday and Saturday), as we were on a quest for a good view. I think we found it:

View from Ragged Mt. to Mt. Megunticook and Mt. Battie

Bright red maples and some glowing yellow striped maples punctuated the evergreen forest near the summit. Colorful leaves created picturesque tableaux where they had fallen amid still-green Christmas ferns, ruddy blueberry plants, moss, and hen of the woods mushrooms. Two vultures soared overhead, and a red-tailed hawk seemed to hover motionless on a thermal. A merlin shot past. In the distance, Penobscot Bay shone like a mirror in the sunlight, and we tried to name all the islands we could see.

When we stepped out onto a broad ledge near the summit, several of us exclaimed aloud as the breathtaking, panoramic view suddenly opened before us. A few in our party were from out of town, and one of them asked, a bit surprised, if we hadn't been up there before. Oh yes, we said. Many times. But it's just as amazing each time. 

Bald Mountain from Ragged Mountain

This view, this beauty.

Gold leaf the size of my head,

whole glowing mountain.

October 12: Red Zone

In football parlance, when you're in the red zone, you're within 20 yards of the opposing team's goal line, hot to score. In the language of autumn leaves in the Camden Hills, the current red zone is a strip of crimson trees on the highest visible ridge of Mount Megunticook, along the backbone of the mountain between the summit and the old landslide above Maiden's Cliff. Fall has left its strongest mark there so far--looking east from Route 105 along the river, that high, red line of trees is very distinctive. I don't know if it's the elevation or exposure that makes those trees more susceptible to phasing out of their green garb earlier than the trees on the ridge below them. But soon enough, the red zone will expand to encompass the entire forested mountainside--a touchdown on nature's terms, that gaudy display of incredible color that seems just as unbelievable year after year. I hope I never get used to it.

Autumn's carnival
is back in town: riotous,
red hot spectacle.

October 7: Thank you, Rainbow

When one is a professional development officer for a nonprofit, responsible for raising money in this difficult economy, not every day at work is a walk in the park. Actually, some days are, literally. Some days I get to hike the land trust's preserves with donors--those are days that I love my job. But today, despite some bright points, by late afternoon I was feeling tired and discouraged. And when it started to rain yet again, that didn't boost my mood. But then, the sun suddenly came out, shining through the rain, and a brief rainbow arched over Mount Battie:

OK, granted by the time I ran outside to take this photograph it had already started to fade, so you can barely see it here. But the sight of that ephemeral band of colors, touching down in the autumn-tinted forest beyond the river and backed by a cheery blue sky, lifted my spirits. Some days that's all it takes. And some days it takes more than that, so today I feel especially fortunate. 

 
Yes, it's a cliche--
rainbow as symbol of hope.
But it worked for me.

October 6: Local Color

On this dark, bleak, rainy night, I'm thankful we figured out earlier why our furnace hasn't been working for a few days. Now the heat's back on, but that's not enough to satisfy my soul. My hair's still wet. I'm wearing black. My husband's wearing black. What I really need are light and color.

There's something about the warm colors of fall that nourish the spirit as the forest begins to shut down for winter. They keep us going. Yesterday I took a few photos on sunlit Ragged Mountain of some fallen leaves and a group of bright orange, pixie-sized mushrooms. The mushrooms reminded me of one of my favorite pieces of clothing, a tangerine-colored down jacket that I wear almost year-round. I'm not sure what it says about my personality that what was once my least favorite hue--orange--is now one of those I'm most drawn to. I think the jacket's color warms me as much as the garment itself.

And favorite jacket aside, it was a cool-looking little cluster of fungi tucked amid fall's first tossed off bits of clothing. Soon enough the trees will be stark, naked, with only the remnants of their hot attire strewn riotously about. The autumn forest is a wild party.

Fall's a wild party,

one last orgy of color

leaving all naked.

Guess these leaves are inspiring--my friend Brian coincidentally posted a similar photo with his blog post today too.

November 1: All Saint's Day

A few of my fellow writers are doing this November Novel Writing Month thing, for which they plan to write 50,000 words during the month of November. Not being a novelist, and not even being a very prolific poet at the moment, I thought that I might follow the concept in the most basic, simple form I can think of. So my plan: I'm going to try to write a haiku every day for as long as I can.

As many of us may remember from back in grade school, a haiku is a syllabic Japanese poetry form of three lines in which the lines are five, seven, and five syllables respectively. A proper haiku includes a kigo, or season word, indicating the season in which the poem is set. For serious haiku writers, there are large almanacs of kigo for inspiration. For example, references to the arrival of cranes, grave visits, and chysanthemums would all signal a (Japanese) poem set in autumn. As a natural history essayist and avid student of nature, this seasonal attentiveness of the form appeals to me--in addition to its brevity. I often resort to writing haiku as a form of writing something when I've got writer's block. I find that the constraints and minimalism of the form then may free me up or jump start me to write longer pieces.

Several years ago a dear friend gave me a copy of the Les Tres Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, complete with replicas of some of the beautiful illuminations painted by the Limbourg brothers. This "Book of Hours" was primarily a religious calendar, and its works of art not only depict seasonally appropriate scenes of everyday life in the French countryside, but also include religious scenes and private references to the life of the Duke himself. For some reason, this combination of the spiritual, the mundane, and the beautiful has always appealed to me and I've often wondered how to respond to the Book of Hours in a poetic way. This may be it, or not.

This is not a Book of Hours but a Book of Days, because most days one haiku is probably going to be about all I can handle. So, here's today's, inspired by the bright green parsley plant still flourishing amid frost-killed marigolds in my garden on one of the last warm mornings of fall:


Parsley sprigs still green

despite several nights of frost.

Slowly winter comes.