The end of autumn is like gazing at the mouth of a dark, long cave on the path ahead. Realizing that you must take shelter, yet fearing you will lose your way and never see the light of day again, you hesitate moving decisively. For months all will be gray and bumpy and filled with a dying slumber. As an elder, we do not like to see dying all around us.
We work at creating an artificial stasis of warmth and light while waiting for the sun to return and favor us. We get a bit of joy from the call of the geese at midnight on the water. They are like old women arguing over laundry or ripe fruit at the market. We smile, because it is their energy that reminds us that life goes on in spite of the dark and cold. They are a trill of silliness.
In the damp gray morning, we feel a soulfuless gazing into the chocolate eyes of the doe as she studies the edge of our woods with snow across her nose and with ears angled listening for life.
Ahead on trail is a conifer with a low branch. We inhale the green of needles pressed between our gloved hands and think of spring.
Winter is that slow part of the symphony where we can just barely hear the drum and the fade of the string instruments that causes us to lean in. Then there is the quiet pause, longer than a fermata, which makes us hold our breath, and just when we must gasp, the sun laughs over the horizon. Miss me?
