The Blessings of an Early October Day

It is early October in Humptulips County, and the trees have yet to begin turning color in earnest.  Our neighbor’s birch tree is the only tree in the neighborhood to have already undressed for winter.  It was in a hurry, as if a narcissist wishing to snare everyone’s attention by being the first to drop its last remaining feather boa.  By yesterday morning, it had shed most of its golden-yellow leaves except for a scattering in its upper reaches and a few bunches remaining clumped on its lowest limbs.

Elsewhere, the colors are only beginning.  Yet by the end of the month, most trees will either be bare or well on their way to that state.  Early October is often like this.  It plays a waiting game, a sort of autumnal limbo.  Summer is clearly at an end, but autumn has yet to assert its full impressionistic assault upon the senses.  Since everyone knows the general idea of what is yet to come, impatience resides in the specifics.  During the next three weeks stunning performance art will unfold on October’s stage, and every seat in the house has a breathtaking view and is free for the taking if only someone cares to come outside and grab one.

I rather imagine that if someone had been held incommunicado inside a windowless building for several months and then blindfolded and taken outside during the first week of October, he or she would instantly know that it was fall in Humptulips County without having to be given a single verbal clue.  That knowledge would come from the light and from the easy bite of the day – a bite like that given by a Maine Coon cat in affection rather than anger.

It all begins with the light.  Autumn’s light is soft; a delicate watercolor wash applied carefully by a master hand using a brush of the finest bristles.  And because we are at the beginning of the master’s annual work, each daily walk reveals more of his intentions as to the final piece he intends.  Because of its qualities, each early October sunny day reads as well in close up as it does from a distance: nearby objects are solid in form, yet rich in intricate detail; the horizon is reduced to a fine blue haze resembling an abstract painting, but with enough content and shape to be suggestive of deeper meaning.

The bite of such a day is as much a reactive feeling as it is a result of temperature.  It is clearly present, yet difficult to describe if someone desires a scientific explanation for its cause.  The day may be warm, but briskness lurks just underneath its surface and makes itself felt as a tingling of the senses.  “Look around you,” it says “for change is everywhere in the wind, and if you fail to pay attention you will miss something wonderful.”  It is an attention-grabbing poke in the shoulder by an unseen companion on a shared walk; it is the wind’s whispered warning of imminent makeover.

As a whole, each early October day is a separate painting which invites you to contemplate the wonders of life and the intricacies of its meaning.  Each such day is a reminder to be grateful for what you now have and for the time remaining to you.  Even those early October days which are clouded with rain and stirred by wind are only pregnant with impending change.   They are only auguries hinting of November’s winds; not something to shelter from, but to celebrate instead.

About Gavin Stevens

Humptulips County is the wholly fictional on-line residence of Stephen Ellis, a would-be writer, an avid fan of William Faulkner and his Yoknapatawpha County, and a retired lawyer.
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