Fall in the air

Pumpkins near Spragueville NY. Photo of the Day archive: Steve Diehl, Antwerp NY.

One of my neighbors was sighting in his hunting guns the other morning. You could tell because of the long delay between each crack, followed at the end by a quick volley, then again with a gun of lower pitch. Another neighbor was still getting in firewood – the sound of his chain saw alternating with the solid chunk of a splitting maul.

Geese are starting to fly in formation and the nights are cooling down toward the frost point. I hear hammers pounding as procrastinators decide they are running out time to finish their roof repairs. And I hear a rototiller, turning the garden debris under to fertilize a new spring.

There is a tang of wood smoke in the air as stoves start their heating season labors, and a tang of something else I can’t quite name, as if you could smell the leaves turning color.

Cider donuts are in the store and islands of sorted pumpkins decorate a lawn beside the highway. $1 to $7, the sign says. Apples taste amazing again, after a long season of mealy substitutes. It’s soup season, and sauce season and pickle season – anything to stash away the summer’s abundance.

All is as it should be in the fat of the year. Breathe deep, walk far; the woods are beginning to glow.

Tags: listeningpost