In late summer. The river valley is poised on summer’s edge, and the days of plenty will soon begin to wane.

Along east-flowing rivers, Native Americans understood that late summer triggered the return of eels to the Atlantic and the onset of migration for winged creatures. They also anticipated a blessed relief from gnats and mosquitoes and a period of respite before the onset of winter.

At home, I found just one swallow in the barn on Sunday evening, a little guy who’d perched on a projecting nail, and was sleepy enough to ignore the flashlight. He was the last of his tribe, and I recognized, sadly, that it would be eight months before he and his fellows return—to repair old nests, and to scold all who enter the barn.

The second stanza of Carl Sandburg’s poem, “Under the Harvest Moon,” distills some of late summer’s bittersweet music:

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

TRR photo by Ed Wesely (Click for larger image)

Field notes. Late summer also summons white caterpillars with black “pencils” of hair, front and rear, such as the tussock moth caterpillar in the picture.