"What I love is near at hand, Always, in earth and air." ~ Theodore Roethke

One night not too long ago, we got out the sparklers and Dominick painted light scapes onto the pitch black canvas of the night sky. This time of year, when the dark arrives to snuff out the sun earlier and earlier each afternoon, we have to work harder to catch the sunshine before it dips below the hills in a fiery exit. The change is so dramatic and quick that you can almost feel the earth spinning and drumming through space on its autumnal orbit of shifting spheres of light and dark as the tilt pulls us farther away from the sun and leaves only traces of the endless stretch of summer days in our northern skies.

The sun, with all those plants revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. ~ Galileo













We've been walking in the afternoons, trying to store up on colors and warmth before winter leaves the pantry bare. We take the dog, who strains on the leash until we release her into the wilds of burdock and asters and milkweed, where she can aid in the seasonal task of seed dispersal and tick-gathering. She rushes through the tall grasses to feel the tickle on her belly, bounds and bounces with tail high and ears flying to search for something, anything, could someone please throw me something?

We've been walking these roads for a long time now, but long gone are the strollers and the simultaneous naps and sweet Zephyr, who walked on a leash with much more dignity than our current 4-legged love Daisy, who was clearly born to run, catch the ticks on her belly, and sneak a swim in the old beaver pond no matter how cold the water might be.

The fields and hills of Gill are lovely this time of year, and yet, like so many other things, the familiarity of place is at once comforting and repelling, and the beauty alarmingly ephemeral in how quickly it changes from day to day. Sit out a day, and you just might miss it.













I long for the unexpected delight at discovering an unexplored back roads or wooded trail not yet taken, a chance to step off the beaten path and go a different way. And it's the promise of this in every day that keeps me going, that makes me wake with the sun and listen for the hidden discoveries waiting to be found. It's a strange kind of wanderlust, arriving every so often to lift me off the track, blow the dust out of my wheels, and put me back on going a different direction. And the wonderful thing is that I don't necessarily have to go anywhere at all to expand my sense of this moment in time; it's the process of changing pace, direction, passengers, cargo that opens up a new perspective, a broader horizon, a more interesting itinerary, even if I make it up as I go along. It's not the speed, it's the velocity, the rudderless ride, the search for serendipity.

There are unexpected delights in each and every day, and thank god for that because if there weren't, I'm not sure how I would get out of bed each day. Some days, I don't get out enough, and I feel numb and disengaged in my slumber. All it takes, sometimes, is going outside, feeling the breath of air on my cheek, the rise and fall of lungs, the thump of my own heartbeat in time with the pulse of life around me. I am reminded to take the time to simply be in this world, to take notice of the Canada geese honking and flying overhead, listen to the squirrels crashing through leaf litter, busily storing nuts, then hightailing it up the long, bowed tree limbs, bear witness to the woolly bear caterpillars' silent, patient crawl into hibernation, seek out the crush and smell of apples, taste the sweetness of the last fall raspberries, and feel the crunch of the leaves underfoot. This is my sanctuary, my respite, the food that sustains my spirit.

I walk out to the gardens, drawn in by a snapping sound that bounces off the tall stalks of decorative grass and floats out intermittently to find me on the lawn. Where is it coming from? I edge closer and the sound intensifies, snap, snap, snap. There is no real rhythm to it, though, just a random release of spontaneous sound that is positively filling my ears with wonderment. Standing on a boulder that marks the spot where our two cats Kitty and Chubby were buried long ago, I am suddenly surrounded by a flurry of snaps that sound a bit like those little white nuggets of gunpowder that provided hours of amusement when I was a kid, and I would throw them hard on the pavement to crackle and snap at my feet. Dominick joins me on the rock, and we scan the dried perennials for the source of the snap, and finally find, in the masses of phlox that surround us, the progenitor of this odd, unexpected concert. Dominick recreates the cheerful chorus, pinching the dried pods of the phlox so they burst open to send their seeds flying, the resultant snap! echoing over and over again throughout the garden.

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. ~ Rachel Carson

We fill our shirts with pears that have fallen from our scattered trees, vowing to once again prune the long-neglected trees in the spring so that the fruit might swell and grow with more sugar and less grit. For now, the ground beneath each tree is covered with what's been an enticing breakfast for the deer that call the wetlands behind our house their home. Some mornings, if we've happened upon the quiet of dawn, the deer will be at the tree, nibbling the pears, slowly, with big dark wet eyes staying alert for that noisy black dog who loves to crash through the bramble in hot pursuit of a thrown pear, or a skittish deer.


We've enjoyed cold weather crops from our garden throughout the fall: kale, chard, green beans, eggplant, peppers, winter squash, raspberries. But the deep freeze has come to put an end to the growing season and drain the color out of the hills, and the garden sits lifeless, save for the kale that seems to thrive in this frosty air. We've put up jam, frozen berries, corn, pesto and beans, stocked up on potatoes, carrots, apples, and squash. And yet there's always more I wish I had done, could do. Most days, I'm happy that I've had the energy to simply bring in more wood for the fire. But it is these daily and seasonal rituals that sustain me: making applesauce, sweeping the porch, building a fire, putting the gardens to bed, filling our shirts with pears. I take comfort, too, in observing the work of those around me, the farmers clearing the fields of cow corn, hauling in the last of the pumpkins and squash, picking apples, pressing cider, making preparations.






Some keep the Sabbath going to Church, I keep it staying at Home - With a bobolink for a Chorister, And an Orchard, for a Dome.
~ Emily Dickinson

Sometimes, when we let our hearts, rather than our habitual feet, lead us, we stumble upon unforeseen delights that bring light into our day, awaken our senses, and embolden our consciousness with something that is merely and wondrously new and different, an offering to enliven the old, the tired, the dull. Dominick and I happen upon a such a delight in Dummerston, Vermont one recent afternoon. After following Kipling Road from the School for International Training, where Luke is playing soccer, past Rudyard Kipling's Naulakha, the engaging old house where he wrote the Jungle Books and which he called a "jewel beyond price," and into colorful views of the hills and mountains beyond that pepper our journey down this meandering dirt road with stunningly gorgeous slices of fall beauty, we find Scott Farm, the 600-acre Landmark Trust-owned largest producer of heirloom apples in New England where portions of The Cider House Rules were filmed. We are treated to samples of the heirloom apple varieties that they have preserved and safeguarded from centuries ago, including Thomas Jefferson's favorite apple (the Esopus Spitzenburg), the oldest variety brought to the New World in the early 1600's, and Julia Child's favorite baking apple. With names like Ananas Reinette, Roxbury Russett, the Winesap, it's hard not to want to fill our bags with some of each, so we do. We buy some cider, too, in the largest Mason jar I've ever seen, and as soon as we are in the car, we unscrew the lid to taste the smooth, sweet cider that is easily the absolute best cider we have ever tasted. Later, we'll head to the Brattleboro Food Coop and see Scott Farm's apples for sale there, but it isn't just about having the apples and cider to enjoy, but having had the experience of going there, filling our memory with that first enchanted view of the inside of the barn, where all the different varieties are lovingly boxed and labeled according to type, in various and surprising colors and textures and sizes, some burnished red, some honey yellow brown, and one, the color of the purple Berkshire hills; some smooth, some mottled, some thick and thorny; some fat and round, others nearly fairy-sized in their diminutiveness, and one with a protuberance that earned it the name of Sheep's Nose. It's about being able to read about each variety, and learn about the history and sheer serendipity of growing apples from Ezekiel Goodband, or Zeke, as he likes to be called, the kind, long-bearded man who serves as keeper of the apple trees, who offers us slices of several different apples, talks about the ancient grafting technique he uses, and the often-haphazard results gained from the very first seeds that were planted so long ago, which he likens to "monkey typing...you might get a Hamlet, if you're lucky, or..." It's about smelling the cider being pressed, tasting the cider right out of the jar, and having the friendly (is there any other kind?) black lab gently steal my apple core out of my hand.

When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being. ~ Ernest Becker

One morning last week, I stepped out into a world of silence. The night had cast an eerie white frost over everything: leaves, grass, car windows, fallen pears, sentinel pumpkins, cobwebs. The pointed limbs on the bare trees suddenly looked like a Tim Burton-esque study of frozen finger tips, milky white and admonitory. As the sun struggled to rise in the sky, the shadows moved throughout the yard, releasing patches of land to warm in the sunshine. If I listened closely enough, I could hear the quiet, subtle thaw breaking and melting the tiny ice crystals, recolorizing the world in reds and greens and oranges and yellows, and restoring life to the fields and trees and thickets for one more day, at least. But after a deep freeze, there is life that hides away unseen, remains suspended until the spring, or does not return, and today, despite the warming sun that broke my sleep with the promise of blue sky early this morning, there is, amidst the fluttering of leaves, the intermittent thudding of the pears that still fall, ripe and heavy to the ground, and the occasional splash and brush of wing on water as the geese and ducks navigate their departure for softer climes, a silence that catches my ear, a silence reflecting the absence of the constant buzz and hum and song of the crickets and bees and songbirds that offered up palpable, vibrational echoes of the life that quietly surrounds us in the warmer months. The leaves have been swept away by the bluster of the fall winds, opening up the view beyond our stone wall, and bringing in thoughts of winter. I know now that winter is coming, with its long stretches of quiet and cold and absolute stillness, and I fill with dread at the thought of spending another winter unable to take part in the unexpected festival of snow and ice, in the rush and swoosh of skiing fast, and the serenity of a mid-winter woods walk. And as I mourn the crickets and the loss of light, I must also celebrate these changes, find the stirrings of life in my own seasonal shifts and tides, and stay open to the possibilities, even as I steel myself against the phantoms that have blown in with the chill to pester me with shadows of last winter’s gloom.

I must trust that this winter will be different, that I'll be able to stay connected to the pulse of nature, listen with an open heart, deepen my healing, continue to grow and feel strong and healthy, feel the spin of earth beneath my feet, close my eyes, and enjoy the ride, wherever I go, whatever comes my way, whatever I find, whatever I learn. Perhaps the colors and warmth and jam we've stocked up on will brighten even the bleakest winter days. And perhaps Winter will surprise us, and bring about a new lustre of hope and festivity that will line our days with gold: wherever I go, here I am.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you... while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. ~ John Muir