But from Labor Day through Halloween, the place is almost unbearably beautiful. The air during these weeks seems less like ether and more like a semisolid, clear and yet dense somehow, as if it were filled with the finest imaginable golden pollen. The sky tends toward brilliant ice-blue, and every thing and being is invested with a soft, gold-ish glow.
~ Michael Cunningham
(Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown)
All these phenomena of the natural world fling forth to the human a challenge to be responded to in literature, in architecture, ritual, and art, in music and dance and poetry. The natural world demands a response beyond that of rational calculation, beyond philosophical reasoning, beyond scientific insight. The natural world demands a response that rises from the wild unconscious depths of the human soul. A response that artists seek to provide in color and music and movement.
~ Thomas Berry
(The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future)
The summer crowds are gone and we had a lovely walk at Napatree Point. This time we climbed a side dune and took in some slightly different vistas. I was bundled up in my hoodie while Tim was still in his shorts — it’s that time of year. 🙂
We saw a couple of gulls flying overhead and a couple of cormorants on buoys in the marina, but the beach itself was deserted. Lots of shells.
And there were lots of beach roses still blooming in the dunes, many rose hips and heaps of goldenrod.
After we got back to the car we drove over to find out if there was any way to visit the Watch Hill Lighthouse. It’s a long walk down a private road, but being over 65 has its perks, we were allowed to drive down! So we found out where we could park in the future and then continue walking out to the lighthouse. Watch this space!
There’s a web like a spider’s web
Made of silver light and shadows
Spun by the moon in my room at night
It’s a web made to catch a dream
Hold it tight ‘til I awaken
As if to tell me, my dream is all right
♫ (American Folk Song) ♫
We used to sing that song around the campfire when I was a girl. It’s such a comforting tune but my spider dreams were never all right. The following pictures are of the pappi of American burnweed seeds caught in another cobweb. I don’t think this spider could have been pleased with what his net trapped!
From the first opening of our eyes, it is the light that attracts us. We clutch aimlessly with our baby fingers at the gossamer-motes in the sunbeam.
~ Lucy Larcom
(The Unseen Friend)
I am an incurable arachnophobe so I was happy to not see any spiders out and about. But I couldn’t help appreciating the handiwork they left behind.
Labor Day weekend with autumn weather! I didn’t think it was possible. We couldn’t resist taking a morning walk in the woods in spite of mosquito and poison ivy threats. I’ve been waiting impatiently for this kind of day all summer.
To include nature in our stories is to return to an older form of human awareness in which nature is not scenery, not a warehouse of natural resources, not real estate, not a possession, but a continuation of community.
~ Barry Lopez
(High Country News, September 14, 1998)
As I’ve often said, I love the sunlight this time of year, in the months surrounding the equinoxes. It seems just right, not too dim nor too bright, and it immerses everything I see in a wonderful presence. Sometimes my camera even catches it the way I perceive it.
Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are “patches of Godlight” in the woods of our experience.
~ C. S. Lewis
(Not a Tame Lion: The Spiritual Legacy of C. S. Lewis & The Chronicles of Narnia)
Impermanence and fragility are essential components of beauty, and of love. In some mysterious way, we are all here together, one whole happening, awake to the sorrow, the joy, and the inconceivability of every fresh and instantly vanishing moment, each of us a bright light in the dazzling darkness.
~ Joan Tollifson
(Facebook, February 24, 2021)
As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away —
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy —
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon —
The Dusk drew earlier in —
The Morning foreign shone —
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone —
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful —
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #935)
Woke up this morning under a hurricane watch. The path of Tropical Storm Henri is inching ever closer to us. Bob Maxon, my favorite weekday morning meteorologist, tells us that the last hurricane to make landfall in Connecticut was Gloria in 1985 and the last to make landfall in New England, was Bob in 1991. Right now Henri is making a beeline to Narragansett, Rhode Island, one county away from us. Last night it was aiming for Buzzards Bay, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. (Even though the outer bands of Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy hit us hard in 2012 it never made landfall here.)
This may be the first time I ride out a hurricane with my husband at home. Both times in the past his employment kept him at work for the duration. For Gloria, the kids and I evacuated to my parents’ house, 45 miles inland. I was pregnant with the baby I lost a month later. For Bob, we evacuated to a friend’s house about 8 miles inland. It was only three months after my mother died. This one will probably arrive as a category 1 hurricane so we probably won’t need to evacuate. Tim’s retired now. I suppose we will be glued to the TV and our laptops until we lose power…
Between the humidity, alarming pandemic numbers and medical appointments, it’s been a very long week. But Sunday evening we did take a saunter through the heaviness at Avery Point and enjoyed taking a few pictures. My blogging motivation is pretty low so I’ve been dragging my heels about getting around to sharing them.
I do love my beach roses and the light this time of year is flawless…
I also saw signs of autumn approaching, reminding me of the pleasure I had last year exploring the woods, taking so many pictures in the cool, crisp fall air.
Rough weather ahead for Sunday! Time to batten down the hatches…
She’ll come at dusky first of day,
White over yellow harvest’s song.
Upon her dewy rainbow way
She shall be beautiful and strong.
The lidless eye of noon shall spray
Tan on her ankles in the hay,
Shall kiss her brown the whole day long.
I’ll know her in the windrows, tall
Above the crickets of the hay.
I’ll know her when her odd eyes fall,
One May-blue, one November-grey.
I’ll watch her from the red barn wall
Take down her rusty scythe, and call,
And I will follow her away.
~ Francis Ledwidge
(August)
Picking our own strawberries used to be a favorite way of marking the summer solstice, but since my diet is so restricted now we decided to visit a different kind of farm this year. The beautiful, sweet-smelling Lavender Pond Farm fit the bill perfectly.
I had to laugh at myself. We were almost there when I realized I still had my house slippers on! So I wore my slippers all day! (Absent-minded old lady!) Thankfully there was no mud on the ground to deal with.
There were quite a few attractions and activities and it looks like they are still adding more. First we took a walk through the formal garden.
The air was fragrant with a thousand trodden aromatic herbs, with fields of lavender, and with the brightest roses blushing in tufts all over the meadows.
~ William Cullen Bryant
(Prose Writings, Volume 5)
Then we took a nice long, slow train ride on the purple Lavender Express, through the lavender fields and around the ponds. We also passed by more than a few fairy gardens in the woods.
We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our cultivated fields and on the prairies and forests without distinction. They all reflect and absorb his rays alike, and the former make but a small part of the glorious picture which he beholds in his daily course. In his view the earth is all equally cultivated like a garden.
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Walden)
After the train ride, we did a quick walk-through in the gift shop, which smelled lovely, and then met a sleepy rooster outside. Tim spent a fair amount of time admiring a very old red truck. It felt a little strange being so close to people without a mask on, actually, just being close to people, period. I never know what to make of people who are wearing masks. Are they unvaccinated? Or playing it safe?
We had a lovely taste of the best kind of summer morning, with low humidity and comfortable temperatures. On the way home we stopped at my favorite restaurant for lunch, where they graciously take and prepare my special order. 🙂
The next day we went to an estate sale, something we haven’t done since before the pandemic started. Again I felt uncomfortable being in such close proximity to people with and without masks. (We’re not wearing them unless required by an establishment.) But I found a nicely-framed needlepoint of two chickadees on a branch, for only $5! And since the garden rake we use to spread mulch every year was falling apart we found one in good condition to replace it, also for $5. It doesn’t take much to delight us! 🙂
Another delightful walk to start off the summer season! It was nice to explore Moore Woodlands again. Last year when we came it was early in the spring, just at the beginning of our pandemic quarantine: feeling warm and comforted. On this visit we were welcomed by a gray catbird. I love how often they keep showing up on our walks.
Hopefully we avoided all the poison ivy and ticks. Everything was lush and green after a three-day weekend of much needed rain. The day before this walk we got our front garden mulched and set up the table and chairs on the balcony. The fairy garden is set up to welcome visitors and a new summery wreath is on the front door.
Realising that spirit, recognising my own inner conciousness, the psyche, so clearly, I cannot understand time. It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly floats in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life. Here this moment, by this tumulus, on earth, now; I exist in it.
~ Richard Jefferies
(The Story of My Heart: My Autobiography)
If only summer could stay this pleasant, with mild temperatures and low humidity. Sigh… Dreading the inevitable start-up of the air conditioning but determined to enjoy this weather while it lasts!