Letting Go, Coming Together
October 1, 2023
Fall is a time for letting go.
Trees let go of leaves, slowly this year it seems. Acorns and maple seeds litter the ground in smaller numbers - it’s been a hard year for the trees. Trees are letting go and preparing for winter. Yellow flowers are hanging on but soon, so soon, they too will turn to seeds and the bees will settle down for a winter’s nap.
Gulls and terns pass through, a few at a time so far. Bonaparte’s gulls, Caspian terns, Forster’s terns, and Franklin’s gulls have wandered through. Letting go of their summer home and following the food to their winter abode.
Chimney swifts still swirl overhead in the morning though it seems their numbers have dwindled. How long before a boater in the Gulf of Mexico looks up to see large swirls of swifts passing overhead on their way to South America? Not long now.
The turkey vultures made me wonder if they had left too, a few mornings without their presence in the usual spot. It seemed early - and it was, they were back in full force the next day. Not far to our south they stay all winter, will that someday happen here?
Late-season butterflies and dragonflies are still floating over my head. Some migrate - what happens to the rest? So many mysteries I have not yet understood.
Fall is a time for coming together.
How strange it is to watch birds that fought for territory shift to communal living. Yellow-rumped warblers, cedar waxwings, and grackle flocks have all blanketed the trees this week.
Each day the flock of blue jays grows. Blue jay migration is a mystery even to researchers. Figures. Jays, being corvids, are smart and like to confound humans. Sometimes they squawk just to see if I will look, I’m sure of it.
Robins are starting to flock together too. Their winter roosts are large here, I’ve seen several hundred birds emerge in the morning. I’ve read their roosts can be much larger - a quarter million! What a sight that would be to see.
Flickers and red-headed woodpeckers vie with the resident red-bellied woodpeckers for prime locations. Squawks and sounds I haven’t heard all year echo through the trees. Where spring squawks seem insistent, fall squawks seem more playful.
Fall is a time for letting go. Fall is a time for coming together. Moving away. Moving in. Breathing out. Breathing in. How are you letting go? How are you coming together?
The change is here for sure. At the end of September, it always rains into the first week or so of October, then we get a last burst of sunny, cool in the morning, warm in the afternoon weather that might last until Thanksgiving.
But today, the clouds are low and there is a mist hanging in the river canyon. One would need a heart of stone to not be a poet these days.
The early mists swirl around red-barked trees as
white fingers of liquid cold rush over glistening stone beds.
the woods are made small by fog, bound and softened,
and the river god rises from the waters, a mist
brooding,
breaking watery bonds.
in its presence, all is diminished and hushed.
the rock spires and fallen trees, wet and touched by
tendrils of damp smoke.
delicate, inquisitive,
the river god caresses
and woos the somber woods.
Your captures are so uplifting! I resonate with your take on the Fall Season in terms of letting go and coming together.