Ordinary Beauty

All of a sudden the wind is noisier than it’s been. It sounds more like a storm is near, but another listen and I see that the wind is not noisier–the leaves are. Drier. Crunchy. Unyielding, and noisier as the wind shakes them one against each other.

We are at the opposite end of my favorite time of year, which by definition perhaps makes this my least favorite time of year. Summer ending.

It’s not that I do not like autumn. Autumn in Seattle is a beautiful thing. Colors in the trees and the sky holds an amazing light. But, it’s the end of summer, and summer is where I belong.

So I try to hold this as a time of celebrating the changes, the subtle changes, their significance in their accumulation and the passage of time. The tips of the fronds in our Western Red Cedar are traveling from soft green to gold to brown. Today the wind shook them and seeds rained. Soon, the seed packets will be red and falling, thick layers piling on the ground beneath the tree, and the branches will raise ever so slightly without the weight of these packages.

The Big Leaf Maple is on a similar trajectory. The clusters of “helicoptors” are browning and already a few have fallen–but most of them remain on the branches, not yet ready to fly. Not quite yet, but soon.
It is true that this is my first autumn in this house as a full-time resident, so there is a lot for me to learn about how nature in these parts gets dressed (undressed) for autumn and winter. Will the hummingbirds stay? Will the flickers stay? Will the Pergrine Falcon that we spotted the other afternoon make many more appearances to fill its belly with an easy-to-nab songbird from one of our birdfeeders? And the Big Leaf maples in the ravine, when their leaves fall and their branches go bare and the valley opens up again, what evidence will there be of the Blue Herons’ nests which were built as the trees started to leaf out and which have been hidden in those tree tops for months?

Nice. Poetic. But I’m telling ya, I’m still a little bitter about imagining having to keep the top up on my convertible as the rain and cold returns.