So far no bugling and very few golden aspen leaves. We are here a couple of weeks too late. On the road to the cabin, we saw a brilliant gold stand of aspens, and hoped that the ones just off the deck would look like that too. I came around the corner of the cabin ready to see them, and instead saw the aspens’ bare white branches against the blue sky. Not what I was looking for, but a beauty I had forgotten about. Memories of past cold weather visits came back to me.
It’s just chilly enough to make a sweater feel good, but the sun is warm. The stars viewed from the hot tub were bright against the cold night sky last night, and every few minutes someone exclaimed, “I saw another one!” as a shooting star trailed across the sky.
Yesterday afternoon, we walked down to the meadow, but the old familiar trails felt different. It wasn’t just the leafless trees or the brown grass. The landscape looked quieter and smaller somehow. The feeling was calm and still. We haven’t been here in fall for at least 12 years, so I may have just forgotten about this pre-winter settling, the growth and abundance of summer tucking back into the earth ahead of the cold days and deep snows that we can smell on the wind even now.
I suspect that I didn’t notice it before. It was just tapping at the edge of my mind this time. Twelve years ago, with kids ranging from four to fifteen, the woods were so full of our family noise that I wouldn’t have noticed this quiet.
My first thought was that it was the absence of wildflowers. In July, bushy purples, lanky pinks and tall, slender yellows fought for space along the trails and the edges of the deck with the white-blooming sage and lilies. The landscape was flashy, beckoning us to come out of the dim cabin and explore. There were abundant shapes and shades, and we spent pleasant hours among them, sometimes trying to name them—mountain aster or common, wild rose or geranium?–based on pictures and descriptions in the field guide.
In late October, the flowers are gone without a trace, even their bushes and stalks sinking into the browning landscape. Only the sage are green in their dusty way, but without the usual fragrance.
It’s a deeper quiet than just the absence of color and fragrance from the flowers. It’s a calm. It’s the earth preparing for a long sleep. There are animals around I’m sure, we’ve heard some rustling and snuffling, and spotted a rabbit. The busy, talkative hummingbirds have left for warmer southern winters, but we’ve seen a vulture and a morning hawk. The elk and deer are here, but out of sight—hunters say they turn into squirrels this time of year.
The cooler air and flat, dull landscape brings us inside more, seeking the warmth of the wood stove and hot cocoa. I’m hiding on a top bunk upstairs, but I can hear the talk downstairs: My daughter asking questions about family history, my son fending off questions about his girlfriend (“Can I read her text?”), my dad trying to fix the coffee maker (“Was it making normal sounds or strange sounds before it quit?”), updates on the progress of heating up the hot tub, board games being suggested, and a lot of comfortable conversation in our little living room, with snatches of country music in the background. I’m starting to hear people asking about me, so it’s time for me to rejoin the conversation downstairs.
When the brilliant, breath-taking blooms and leaves are gone, I see solid trees standing at lovely angles against the sky, and the subtly colored mosses and lichens on the exposed rocks, the slope of the hill, the tiny cactus in the red earth. It’s beautiful in its own quiet way.
As I move from the abundance, busyness and exploration of a young family into the more sedate days of an almost-empty nest, I’m seeing the beauty of this quieter season of my life. It feels like a gathering in after the expansion is done, and I am loving the richness and the depth I find in that calm.
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