Fall the harbinger season

After years of drought this past spring and summer brought relief to North Georgia. Everything green responded by becoming more abundant and greener.  Segments of sky and land surrounding my home disappeared. Landmarks and whole dwellings became obscured by roadside kudzu and the deciduous forests that climb the mountains.  I have felt greater understanding of what this land was like before highways and cleared "viewing points."

Now we are on the step of fall and its glorious gift in the turning of the leaves; the sky and sun never more brilliant.

Fall is the harbinger season. It foretells some time of sparseness but also perhaps greater clarity of vision, a time to reset bearings.

Those who live close to the land and its diverse lives have confidence in the return of abundance.

I think of my father's often stated understanding that the joy in the beauty of the flowers that were his life and livelihood lay in being perishable; a metaphor for life itself.

I have watched the first four hours of the Ken Burns National Park  series.  It seems a bit too self conscious in mission and also a little jagged in editing. But those are minor distractions from the majesty of the natural beauty and the lives of those who understood the spiritual necessity of preserving broad paths to our essence as creatures of nature.

Probably unwarranted, I feel some sense of ownership in the fact that the great John Muir grew to manhood in Wisconsin during the time and just a county over from  my ancestors who were settling the new territory. Some credence of shared experience comes with reading the letters of  Florinda Watkins and others describing the beauty of the land; and as well the admonishment by a sister questioning seeking wealth beyond need.

From The Sun magazine: quoting Clifton Fadiman, "John Muir once declared that he was better off than the magnate E.H. Harriman. 'I have all the money I want.' Muir explained, 'and he hasn't.'"