Even as I step out of the front door I can feel it in the air. All seems still, the air leaden, dense and motionless and yet… Despite the stillness, there is a definite tension, a sense of the unmoving preparing to move again after a long hiatus.
At first it’s difficult to distinguish exactly where this tautness is coming from. It is felt, of course, but it takes a little consideration before I actually see it around me – in the air, on the roadside verges: a gentle pulling in different directions as everything starts to fray a little at the edges now. The morning light is more sluggish in arriving, the blackberries are disappearing fast and even the man-made parts of the landscape are beginning to retreat into their latter-season outfits of damp and moss, at least in little corners here and there, as the backdrop alters daily, offering something new for the eye at each turn. The summer has begun, in earnest, to dismantle itself.
Despite all of this, it’s a beautiful morning. In fact, I think it’s probably more beautiful because of this gentle decline; the beauty of evanescence. As I leave the house for my walk, allowing the rest of its inhabitants, human and cat alike, to sleep on, there is a slight chilly tinge to the air and the whole vista seems made of vapour and sunlight as the dampness of the previous night begins to burn away.
I turn away from the town, as I often do, heading up into the neighbouring valley, accompanied only by birdsong and the pale early light reflected in the amber tones of fallen leaves, more and more of which seem to accumulate by the day. Where the path enters a tree-tunnel, made up mostly of sycamores interspersed with a few beech and oak, a dense carpet of browned leaves covers the ground like a lovely but elegiac trackway to some other, sad, place, strangely appropriate given the calendar’s nearing proximity to All Souls and All Saints. Funny how we find such contrasts all around during this season – so much scarcity and loss, yet so much fun at times too – such an invite as this would bring out the inner child in anyone and I am no different, happy to shift and kick and shuffle my way through its coppery drift. Perhaps that’s how a lot of our celebrations – Halloween, Bonfire night, Christmas – have ended up so well-celebrated, acting as bright tonics to light up darker months, a remedy that isn’t needed so much through those brighter, lighter seasons.
This contrast is highlighted almost everywhere I look now, especially as the days and weeks trundle by; juxtapositions and metaphors abound in each corner such as the familiar garden just up ahead, the back fence of which is guarded by sentinel sunflowers. They are easily fifteen-feet tall and add an imposing splash of colour to the morning and yet, just across on the opposite side of the path, a small stand of sycamores is peppered with tar spot, a fungal condition that doesn’t really harm the tree but is a striking image nonetheless, and a stark reminder that not all is golden beauty at this time of year.
There is enough golden beauty, however, for now, even if it feels as though I am playing catch up with everything. As my steps take me further away from the town centre streets, sweeping me deeper toward the heart of the valley, everything appears unexpectedly busier rather than quieter – a few hastily abandoned chestnuts tell their own story of squirrels ramping up their preparations for the coming of the winter, preparations to which they will very likely return as soon as I’m done dawdling here. Even the river seems to hustle along, peeking through the trees to my right, riffling through little side tributaries here and there and now bounding away through a meander like an eager spaniel, leaving me behind to catch up at my own slow pace.
I shan’t chase them, though, the river or the season. Nature may be busy at work, but I’m content to pick at the ragged ends of summer, to dawdle, dither and daydream as I have the luxury of “time yet for a hundred indecisions, /And for a hundred visions and revisions…”, as T.S. Eliot noted. I’ll carry on collecting these ramblings loosely in my head ready to jot down later, as there are plenty of “visons” to be had, golden, shadowy and otherwise, and I have no doubt whatsoever that I shall catch up with river, season and my own thoughts at some point just around the next bend.
