Morning Light, Autumn

I wish I could send this morning's light to you, my friends. Wrap it up in a big, airy, gauze poof of a package and mail it near and far.

This morning, as I was driving my son to his little school in the hollow, I noticed the light. Going southeast on the neighborhood road that becomes country road after the four-way stop, right before the turn onto the winding road that crosses the creek, the browning rows of corn swayed in the fall breeze. They are the foreground of a series of stacked-up vistas right at that hilltop spot. A tall, thick row of deciduous trees stakes the middle ground in the midst of fields. Behind them, a distant glimpse of farms in a gentle cup of a valley shone in a patch of sun and rolled up to another curve of dark trees. And above them all, low gray clouds diffused the light, made the shadows of trees hover above the asphalt as if they were about to float away. It was a still light, expectant. Harbinger of storm, it promised both life-giving rain to the stubborn wildflowers that are holding fast to the vestiges of summer and wind-rattling death to branches still hung with leaves. It was eclipse light, the hush of reverence before the sun disappears briefly, leaving only the weak rays at the edge of the star to diffuse outward through the ether to hang suspended above us like a fine mist.

Oh, at that moment how I wished Mary Ann Wakely could be there with her paint and easels to capture it on canvas for me!

Later, on my morning walk, I woke a fuzzy bumble bee drowsing on a goldenrod stalk. He was so still that I thought he had died eating his last, sweet meal. But a flicker of a leg told me that the cold morning was a time of rest. As I watched, he vibrated his wings experimentally, starting up his internal heater. He stayed still, waiting either for the sun to emerge from the gray clouds and warm him or for the drops of rain to fall, I don’t know which.

A perfect fall morning.