A Deep River Year
October 29, 2014

October is a delicious, joyous month, celebrated under a canopy of golds and maroons and the year's bluest sky. Sunday afternoon we picked apples at the local orchard. The wind was swirling and there was a nip in the air, but we came home with a bag full of Golden Delicious apples and the sweetness of autumn in our blood. We carved pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, which will stand guard on our front steps this Friday night as a parade of children come to our door looking for "trick-or-treat candy." And we have rigged up our Ghoulie Girl at the end of our kitchen sidewalk.

This has become an annual tradition. Usually sometime early in October our granddaughters start asking about “Ghoulie Girl,” and so the supplies come down from the attic and the inflatable black cat and pumpkin emerge from the basement. An old nightgown and rubber gloves serve for the body and a broomstick for the arms. The face is an ugly mask attached to the post light, topped with an old wig and pointed hat. She looks enough like a witch to be scary, but we laugh merrily at her appearance.

Some communities are giving up the celebration of Halloween. Certain religious groups have an aversion to a holiday with roots in pagan worship and evil spirits. Others have a more pragmatic aversion to children running through the streets in the dark so that they can load up on candy. One area school system is encouraging a more generic "fall festival" instead. But the child in me remembers frosty nights and the shuffle of leaves, a bulging pillowcase and the smell of my breath behind a scary mask. And I still sometimes feel the shiver that comes from a moon peering through twisted branches, the wail of the wind, the possibility of something unknown lurking beyond the edges of my safe and familiar world. I want a candle inside a grinning pumpkin face to light up the night, at least for a moment. Though I am a child no more, I am glad for a Ghoulie Girl to remind me that joy can still turn away the darkness.

Ghoulie Girl

She stands guard,
 a nightgowned sentinel
 with crooked face and billowing dress,
 watching the shadows for us.
 We fashion this wild-haired spectre
 out of cloth and sticks,
 but also out of the old fears
 that lurk in the helpless places
 within us.
 We know the night,
 recognize the grim voices
 that cry out from a cruel, embattled world,
 hold our breath and cross our fingers
 that the blind angel of fate
 will fly on by.
 And we are haunted by
 our own shadow,
 the one that rises in our sleepless nights,
 the one we have not learned to love.
 So in the season of failing light,
 we set a little light to shine,
 some twisted smile to grin a hope
 into the night,
 then call it joy that bends our fears away
 when we are child again.

--Timothy Haut, October 29, 2014

A Deep River Year
 October 22, 2014

The long, balmy days were sure to end eventually. This has been a gentle summer of soft days and cool nights, and this golden autumn has continued to be kind to us. There are still a few little tomatoes ripening in the garden, and green beans remain to be picked. For weeks there have been plenty of waving cosmos and bright zinnias, and the overgrown roses seem to like these cool October days, at least enough to surprise us with a sweet blossom here and there before winter comes. Best of all, the morning glories have bloomed at last. For months the vines have been sprawling over the garden fence and climbing the archway above the gate, and we have waited patiently for the cooler days of September to welcome their bloom. We have waited and waited. September came and went, and not one promising blue blossom.

Then, at last, October arrived. Helen Hunt Jackson's wonderful poem says that the suns and skies of June cannot compare to "October's bright blue weather." But for us, it was not the blue skies which we celebrated, but the glorious heavenly blue morning glories that decorated the edge of our garden. They are called "Heavenly Blue" for a reason. There is hardly another blue in nature to compare with these simple flowers, huge azure trumpets with a golden throat serenading the sunrise. For a week or two they have been gracing us. And the bees, too, have been thankful for them, making their last rounds before the flowers are gone at last. One afternoon a host of bumblebees flew in and out of heaven's blue, and in one great blossom I found a pair of them entwined--content, perhaps, to stay there forever.

That was not meant to be. Overnight a cold front swept through our valley, and when I stepped outside at dawn, the thermometer had just touched the freezing mark. The world seemed to shiver a bit with this brush of frost. It was not a hard frost. The marigolds and pineapple sage are still green and tall, and the tomatoes haven't given up, either. But, alas, the tender morning glories are drooping and shriveled. Now we will have to wait for next year to see such loveliness again. And the bees will have to look for heaven somewhere else.

Morning Glory

My love,
 we cut across the grain of the year
 in this season of angled light,
 seeking one more moment of summer.
 It is not ours to make, or will,
 but sometimes it comes
 as grace note
 to the dwindling days.
 One mellow day,
 the sun smiles warm
 upon this world of orange and gold,
 and the soft air hums
 with the gladness of bees
 who have found
 a tapestry of morning glories
 trimming our backyard fence with blue,
 a color richer than sky and sea.
 I will hold this vision,
 keep coming to it,
 that there is heaven in the world
 to find,
 some goodness lovely as a morning glory
 whose center is a star,
 a golden promise
 I would share with you.

--Timothy Haut, October 22, 2014

A Deep River Year

October 15, 2014      

 

The huge pile of leaves in our front yard is a product of the great old maple that stands guard over the south side of the house.   The bright leaves have been swirling down for a few weeks now, a process accelerated by the weekend's wind and rain.   Actually, the pile is so big because my granddaughter and her friend spent a few hours raking it high enough so that they could do satisfactory dives and flips into it.    Wild giggling followed, then more raking, then more jumping.   Then I took a leap, too.

 

The great fall of leaves marks the loveliest of seasons in New England.   The first glimpse of autumn comes in August, when a flash of red appears in the roadside sumac or the woodbine climbing a stone wall.   Up north the change of colors begins in earnest in September, and where we are, near the mouth of the Connecticut River, the peak of foliage color may not come until the end of October.  We savor this, even though it is a change that leads to winter.   The scientific explanation is that as the days shorten and the light dwindles, the green chlorophyll in the leaves can't continue to feed the tree and eventually the tree stops producing it.   As chlorophyll disappears, we begin to see other pigments which hide during the green of the year. Orange and yellow and red make their show at last.

 

Sometimes we see this in people, too:   when darkness gathers and the hard seasons come, our colors may turn the brightest.   Often in those difficult times the human spirit shines with its greatest beauty.   Many years ago I spent an October afternoon with an old professor at his summer cabin high up on the bank of the Housatonic River.   He was a famous historian, a great author, at the twilight of his life.    It had turned cold, and the little man stood bundled up in a heavy coat, his small round glasses glinting in the failing sunlight.   The autumn wind tousled his mane of snow-white hair as leaves flew around us.  "Some people get  melancholy when autumn comes and everything dies down," he said looking at the multi-hued hills across the river.   Then he grinned as I'll always remember him:  "But what a way to go!"

 

Autumn Crown

 

I have come now to the autumn,

and I see that my hair

has turned gray with time.

Around me the October world

is making its way toward winter,

and on a thousand hills

there is one more surge of life

before the cold days arrive.

A jubilation of trees,

their roots deep in ancient soil,

seem to smile,

knowing that it is fine to stand

in the fading light

wearing an autumn crown.

I have earned my gray, these years,

but sometimes I think

that it would be a lovely thing

to walk through crisp afternoons

with hair of red and gold,

a crown of joy to shine

in the fading light.

 

--Timothy Haut, October 15, 2014

A Deep River Year
October 8, 2014   

 October in New England is defined by its colors--the bright oranges, reds, and yellows that paint the hills and valleys. For me it has always been smells, too. Years ago it was the smell of burning leaves that perfumed every October afternoon. Still, autumn is redolent with earth smells, the sweetness of decay and the ripeness of apples fallen in the long grass. In the autumn wind sometimes you can catch a whiff of the sea, or perhaps the merest hint of winter in the night air. But the sounds of autumn are there, too. I smile at the familiar rustling of leaves on the streets. And I paused this morning to watch an arrow of geese passed over the treetops, honking some kind of message and massaging the air with the beating of wings.

Here in Deep River we hear another sound: the whistle of an old steam locomotive as it makes its way up and down the river valley. For generations the sound of a train whistle has been a haunting sound. It has been a harbinger of change and loss, a yearning for something beyond our sight, or a longing for those who have left us. Autumn, too, has about it this sense of lament. Even in its sweetness, it sings a song of departure, of endings. It is a season of memories about those who have taken some train far away from us, or of opportunities we have missed and of days that will come no more.

But I walk the railroad tracks remembering the boy that I once was, waiting on the platform of the station, waiting for the rumble in the distance, the plume of smoke, the bright light of the approaching engine. It would roar into view, sleek and gleaming, then churn to a stop. These trains had magical names, like the Rocky Mountain Rocket and the Denver Zephyr. I never got to travel on one of them, but I always dreamed that they were bound for glory. And they made me think that in this world where everything was possible, I might be bound for glory, too.

Train Tracks

We would kneel in the gravel
and carefully place our pennies
on the shining steel rails,
then wait in the trees
for a great engine to come thundering by,
flattening our coins into good luck charms.
We would pocket those copper discs
and they would carry us away
to the golden lands of our dreams.
We always wished, then,
to go somewhere else,
imagining that life would carry us away
to a place past prairies and mountains,
a place where we could find something—
perhaps fame, or romance, or glory--
beyond the long bend in the tracks.
Today it is quiet as I walk the twin rails
that curve past water and woods.
Amid a flurry of yellow leaves
I am a boy again,
hearing in the wind a far-away whistle.
Though I am content in this good place,
I reach in my pocket for a penny
and place it on the track.
I leave it there behind me,
offering it to someone
who may walk these rails tomorrow
and need to pick up a dream.

--Timothy Haut, October 8, 2014

A Deep River Year 
October 1, 2014

It still felt like summer this weekend, but a sure sign of autumn was the Woolly Bear caterpillar (Pyrrharctia isabella) that we found inching its way through the grass. We stopped to take note of this bristly, bi-colored creature, so far removed from us in the network of living things. Yet we hoped it could tell us something about our future. The old lore has it that if the brown band in the middle of the caterpillar is wide, the coming winter will be mild. So we took some comfort, on this sunny September day, to believe that this little moth-to-be was offering good news for the cold months ahead.

The future is always a great unknown, and perhaps that is why even intelligent creatures like humans still consult groundhogs and caterpillars to give us a glimpse at what may lie ahead. Some of these old tales may have some truth in fact, at least when it comes to weather. I have always been told that a halo around a winter moon means that snow is coming. Yesterday's rosy sunrise cautioned "Red sky in morning, sailors take warning." And today it is raining. But some other prognosticating practices may just be wishful thinking. My Great Aunt Anna hid an almond in the Christmas rice pudding, promising that whomever found it in their bowl would have wealth or love in the new year. And my grandmother had the mysterious power to read the future in coffee grounds left in the bottom of a drained cup. In her visions, the future always held something good.

Of course the future is not always benevolent. Some would say that the universe is remarkably indifferent to our personal well-being. An article in Sunday's New York Times tried to put one person's life in the context of the universe. The writer surmised that after his own death, his remains would begin to be re-absorbed into the earth’s mold. Within 67 years of his death, the last person with a living memory of him would also die. Within 10,000 years ecological disaster and disease would wipe out most of the human population of earth, and in seven million years or so an asteroid would collide with our planet and send it spinning on a slow journey into the sun. Just over three billion years from now a tiny speck of what used to be a human person would become a falling star in another galaxy. Perhaps this inevitable doom is too dreary a prospect for a bright September day. Maybe that's why it cheers us up to imagine that a caterpillar can help us dream a soft winter and an early spring.

Woolly Bear

You travel a journey in the world
 by inches,
 crawling toward winter
 with a promise you can not know.
 We will die, both of us, soon enough,
 and autumns will come and go
 as sure as the geese will fly.
 But for this little moment
 of sun and splendor,
 I would believe your sweet forecast
 that winter will be kind and soft,
 and that spring will come soon,
 and that like you, little Isabella,
 I will one day take wing and fly,
 or live some hidden dream
 beyond my present sight.
 We creep together through this green season
 bearing an assurance--
 or at least a wish--
 that though cold days may come,
 we shall all be well.

 --Timothy Haut, October 1, 2014