October Impressions

Come, take a walk with me through October. It is a path that winds through grouse woods and along quiet pond sides, past blaze-red maples to aster-frosted meadows and beyond; and from painted landscapes that are autumn’s glory to the stripping of the trees by winter’s first cold, windy caress.

October is the year’s latter April, a bridge between seasons and a month of many moods.

In October, you may find yourself wearing shorts and a T-shirt, or long pants and a jacket. It just depends. What kind of weather is on the menu? At the beginning of the month, chances are it’s balmy temperatures and crisp, blue skies; at the end, it’s likelier to be chill rains and iron-gray nimbostratus.

Are children aware how short the span is between now and when the snows fly?

When I was a child, I used to wonder what adults meant by the old adage, “Time flies.” Now I know. Take a breath and the leaves will be gone and the months of black, white, and gray will have settled in. Breathe again and the year 2009 will have passed. That’s how it is once you hit your fifties.

But a child, lost in the perpetual moment, experiences time differently for having experienced so little of it. Winter? What of it? It’s a carnival of snowmen and snowball fights and sledding, something to welcome with glee. And it is still weeks away. It might as well be months. The future inevitably arrives for a boy or girl; it just takes much longer to do so. Meanwhile, there are rope swings to swing on, and bikes to ride, and playground games to play, and leaf piles to shuffle through in the hazy glow of an Indian Summer afternoon.

Yet all the while, the wolf of winter is prowling close at hand, ready to pounce. I saw one of his relatives just last week while strolling with Lisa down the nature trail at Meijer Gardens. Actually, he didn’t look like such a bad chap—perfectly harmless, you might even say. There he stood at the woods edge, still as a statue. Well, okay, that’s because he was a statue, one of several animal sculptures scattered along the trail, and of countless other sculptures, from the modest to the monumental, that comprise Meijer’s remarkable, world-class sculpture park.

Like everywhere in Michigan, the Gardens are showing the effects of October. They just do it with a little more flair. If the countryside is punctuated here and there with fields of bright orange pumpkins, the Gardens are brimming with luminous hundred-pounders, veritable sumo wrestlers of the pumpkin world. They’re something to see, not just because they’re so huge, but also because there are so many of them.

Nevertheless, wonderful as the Meijer Gardens are, it is the raw, untamed edge of nature that appeals to me most, and never moreso than in October…

…when the forests become a coat of many colors for the great outdoors to wear…

…when the sun’s fading rays cloak the marshlands in shadow while burnishing the distant trees in  light…

…when Canada geese congregate in the waters and wetlands and make plans for the long trip south…

…when cold, rainy days make me glad to be inside, sitting in my easy chair with a mug of tea near at hand and my keyboard in my lap, writing.

Exactly as I have been doing.

That is what afternoons such as this are made for.

May you and I enjoy the October days still left to us this year as the gracious gift that they are.