#16 - Post Labor Day Train of Thought

September is here, the time of year when life picks up a new rhythm. Suddenly, as the sky turns a decidedly darker blue, there is the feeling that the lazy, carefree days of summer are over. Purposeful looks on thoughtful faces now reflect how many weeks are left for domestic industry before cold weather - not many.

Big yellow buses, forgotten for a while, are rumbling around the country roads again, and I am reminded it is time to get back to business. Where to begin? That might be a problem. The last three months were prone to procrastination of the highest order, and now ahead lies the challenge of fall chores. Vegetables and firewood, first on the list, must be got in, and they alone can take up several weekends.

The urgent autumn calls of a blue jay ring out over the drying corn stalks and piles of squashes in the garden, which has to be put to bed in time, and they are accompaniment, too, to the determined rhythm and flying splinters in the chopping yard.

Then the front of the house still has to be painted; mackerel fishing seemed much more important that day back in July I started to open the can of Outside White. And the front door needs a new coat of paint and a new storm door as well.

As for storm windows, a whole platoon of them is standing at attention in the barn, waiting to do battle with me someday soon - 17 windows with 34 sides to be washed after the 17 with 34 sides on the house have been cleaned first - this made all the more challenging on our rickety, old step ladder that has already seen too many swaying, near catastrophic window changes over the years. What we go through to keep a little heat in the house! 

Then again, what we go through to send heat out again, up the chimney along with a lot of smoke and soot. I try not to think about it, but that's what happens. So the chimneys get cleaned too with great ceremony. Out come the brushes and dustpans, little mirrors for peering up through and threaded rods for pushing down through. This activity is usually accompanied by serious discussion of creosote and flu temperatures and combustion in general by any concerned souls on hand with black and faces and knitted eyebrows. Oh, the joys of living in a temperate climate!

Ah, joy indeed! A great little word that alludes to the savoring of moments. The carefree stampede of summer has come and gone, to be replaced by beautiful, sweet-sad autumn when the days ahead are cool, clear, crisp and full of moments to be savored: weekend afternoons raking leaves; sounds, smells and colors that will carry me for another year; Halloween, up to my elbows in pumpkin pulp, laboring over the decision whether to carve a scowl or a smile; watching a bluebird-morning sunrise in a lifting mist from a duck blind; the welcoming smell of wood smoke on the chill evening air.

The wonderful thing about autumn is that there still is time to enjoy its stillness. Yes, there are pressing matters to be tended to, yet because of that very urgency, they somehow always see completion - the wintering instinct.

It's with the same compulsion, I think, I linger a little longer at the end of my workday to consider what it took to get to this point and how long it will be before I do it once more . . .  and to savor the cleansing simplicity of this time of year.