Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The Falling


Today there was ground fog in our valley for the first time this season, just a few wispy patches hugging the dried brown pastures next door. But it was there. In the dark morning, I can always tell how damp it is outside by the poping of the hotwire as the current jumps the plastic insulators and sparks against the metal t-posts in the horse pastures. Just a few drops of dew is enough to get a little cracking sound every time the energizer pulses, and when the fog is thick and wet I can see small bright flashes around the pasture as well.

This morning, the astringent but sweet smell of tarweed (Hemizonia congesta) floated through the air, comforting and familiar. The dull yellow leaves of the changing season are dropping from my cottonwood trees too. All the leaves from the interior loose their green color first as they drop from inside out. Further in the season the last few leaves will cling to the tips of the branches and finally be blown away by the real weather that comes in on the winter storms. We don’t get the spectacular gold and red color changes at our house; we just have to settle for the gradual persistent browning of our deciduous trees. Leaves drop assiduously until naked stems are left to waiting until spring comes again.

The marine layer of fog has moved into our valley for the last few days giving us the much needed relief from screaming hot 104’s from just two weeks ago. The nights are also manageable now with dewy 50’s contained on either end by dusk and dawn within an ever shortening day. I love to wake to the grey misty skies which give me a breath of cold air when I walk out to feed the horses.

The horse’s short summer coats are beginning to shed. My curry brush is filled with thousands of soft little hairs that end up flecked on the floor of the barn. While they don’t know it, their bodies are getting ready for winter. Soon the long warming hairs will push through forming a dense, wind and water resistant barrier to their skin. The rain of auburn and brown horse hair settles then is blown about by the gusts from the north wind; the hairs swirl and scatter across the rubber matted floor then fly out into the fields. I think it takes decades for the hair to totally decompose.

Everything here leads me to the coming of change this season, be it good or bad this year. I usually look forward to this time of year since the heat breaks to cooler weather and the mid day becomes mine again. During the summer it is too hot to go outside between 1 and 4 so we're often relegated to the house or the deep shade on my porch. Once the cooler weather begins I can ride a horse while the kids take their naps. But today there is a melancholy air to the weather probably due to the falling parallel in the economic world. To listen to the news makes my stomach churn and sickens me. Falling and falling, as the seasons reel along supported by unstoppable changes in the physical world, so do the changes in the nation’s oldest and most trusted financial institutions. Declining our Country falls and falls again.

1 comment:

I For One..... said...

Hey another bloggin' mamma! Welcome to the world of the online brain dump!

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