Autumn slipped
Published November 9, 2005 | 
In my place, in my place
Were lines that I couldn’t change
I was lost, oh yeah – coldplay
Autumn slipped past beautiful without calling attention to herself. I missed it. I think she must have donned her best posh frock while we were away. Now she’s wearing rags you wouldn’t scrub the floor in. The season for me has come full circle and taken me from the now cold water of Devil’s lake and placed me back on the myriad trails that traverse this glacial landscape I live in. These trails are the friends who will join me each day and keep me focused until spring arrives again. Every tree is a running partner. Every hike ends with more clarity than it began. And with luck, a few hundred calories are left behind as well.
In summer it’s easy to begin most days with my Explorer waiting to greet me for a morning paddle. A quick five minute jaunt and we’re free to play together on our small lake. Now I have to gather up all the gear that is meant to keep me safe, warm and dry. I wrap myself up like a mummy and stuff myself into my boat as if loading a flintlock. Flexibility is gone. Rolling until my head is swirling is no longer the joy it was when the water was warm and held you immersed in her arms. Now the water greets you with the cold resentment of an ex-lover. No one wants to immerse themselves in that sort of cold!
A few days back I was hiking on the wet brown trails and took notice of the perfect stillness in the air. I was walking in a faded photograph and nothing moved. I felt offensively loud and cumbersome as I walked. I should not make so much noise. I sat on an old blackened stump along the trail and let the stillness fill back in around me. From the mute landscape came a flutter. I looked up to see a single red leaf shutter against a light breath of wind. Then all again was quiet. In my mind there was an impression, something sensual, but far out of focus. I wondered where that single breath had come from. How had it found that one tiny leaf just above my head? When would it return in strength to ravage to the tree line around me? I waited in a long silence. Grey clouds raced above a silhouette of barren branches. I waited. Time stretched in sheets until the sound of my own breathing called me away from my vacant thoughts. Then as is common with us humans, my mind slipped from meditation to boredom & distraction and soon I was again plodding along through the woods back to my car and home. How odd this life is. Is there deep meaning in the fluttering of a leaf? I can’t help but think about a scene from the Simpsons; “Maybe there is no moral.”, “Yeah, It’s just some stuff that happened.”
-d
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