Musings From Nature 

Woods at dusk" September 2016

Tonight was one of those red sky in the West nights where you don't have a clue where you are going, but you know you need to be in the woods somewhere. I had to think and maybe find answers to questions that still remain an enigma, not willing to give up any truths. I walked down the paths I know so well from my youth only the brush is so thick now and there were no birds. I wonder if they sense something. The woods usually resound with the squawking and the squeaking of blue jays and crows, robins and tanagers. But this evening only silence curtained the heavy lidded oaks and maples. Even the ubiquitous geese remained aloof, never once skating down the stream or taking their station on the footpaths. There was a deep perfume there like heady citrus from already decaying greenery. Their glory is already fading. Heavy and exhausted looking, the sassafras tree seemed lost and overwhelmed by the straying of vines from wayward weeds. Soon, colors would inundate this little preserve of Indian trails and make believe. It will be glorious of course. But then winter will come, no mistaking that, and it will be over. Dry and brittle will the branches be and nothing will remain but the trees, stately and shorn in the cold blasts of ice. Pagan people would gaze upon this once upon a time and fear that the spring would never come. The cycle required a sacrifice of something. I wonder if it still does.

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6Bill Clinger, Cynthia A. Sandor and 4 others