Savoring stillness

“In the evenings I walk down and stand in the trees, in the light paused just so in the leaves . . .” River Notes: The Dance of Herons, Barry Lopez.

In the leaves, a fragile nest clings to delicate branches. At its base, three miniature eggs lie, drilled and dry. Farther down the trail, splayed among the grasses, a soup-bowl-sized nest unweaves itself. Emptied of their occupants, they rest, remnants of the passing season.

Ferns begin to yellow, then to slowly descend like the end of a prayer or the closing of a quiet song. The hummingbird will not linger long and monarch butterflies join the throngs of creatures making their way to southern places.

All the others who remain harvest berry, nut, grass, nectar, seed, pollen and leaf in preparation for survival when the air snaps with cold and the snows come.

The crickets and grasshoppers saw and whittle in the meadows for a little while longer. The katydids’ rhythmic reminder of the season’s subtle movement thins from forest-filling cacophony to those few hardy soloists casting solitary calls against the chilly curtain of a flannel shirt and campfire evening.

Light sharpens like a knife turned on its edge, delivering us from months of generous luminosity into a certain clarity that slices through diminishing foliage and silhouettes limb and bough.

Light gives us less of itself, rousing us later in the morning and sending us indoors earlier. It invites us to pause in our own preparations as our senses are stroked with autumn’s subtle notes.

As we wake to each day’s hastening movement away from summer, watch for moments of stillness against which to measure the sweep of change. Sit for a spell among the collapsing grasses; listen for the titter of fluttering leaves; allow the light to slow your step for a lingering glance across the precipice of this month’s autumnal equinox.