When fall comes to New England
The sun slants in so fine
And the air’s so clear
You can almost hear the grapes grow on the vine
The nights are sharp with starlight
And the days are cool and clean
And in the blue sky overhead
The northern geese fly south instead
And leaves are Irish Setter red
When fall comes to New England
Cheryl Wheeler, When Fall Comes to New England
I am late in getting to my library to write today, having had an early morning breakfast meeting at a nearby café. When I got to the café, it was pitch dark due to the fact that we are still on daylight savings time and it is October. But by the time breakfast was over, I found myself driving home under a newly risen sun hanging serenely in a lightly cloud-dappled sky, passing by the commencement of a fall workday at a neighboring equestrian farm.
There was much to see this morning, even through the windows of a car. Sunlight was splashed lavishly across the fields lining our lane, leaving long shadows in its wake – long lines of parallel shadow which somehow managed to stitch, staple, and meld all that was visible into an emotional whole, into the sort of territorial conglomeration which Tolkien termed ‘The Shire’, which Cheryl Wheeler comprehends as New England, or what I imagine as Humptulips County. The particular name which anyone chooses to use to describe the land where he or she resides is not nearly as important as the love inherent in its usage; any name will suffice, if its use is intended as a demonstration of our respect for, and homage to, the land which sustains us.
This morning’s shadows were at play in the sort of heavy dew common to a Humptulips County autumn: the sort of dense, compact dew just this side of frost which is the corpse of an early morning fog brought to earth by the very sunshine which sent the shadows out to play; the sort of heavily layered, lush dew that is nature’s initial hint about the impending hibernation and spare rigidity of winter, but which is still supple enough, despite the lateness of the season, to remind us of the summer just ended; the sort of dew that seems to arise from the labored exhalations of a land engaged in the last triumphant throes of hard physical labor. In short, a harvest dew.
On the equestrian farm itself, men were grooming and leading horses to pasture, while other horses were already grazing there, consuming grass and dew in single emulsified mouthfuls. All – horses and men alike – looked content; all – horses and men alike – seemed as if one with the land, as if long since wedded to it or as if constituent biological components of the concept. And as I passed by, the nearest horses looked up at me in unison through the fence and the morning’s sun-dazzle as if to ask: “Do you understand?” Or, perhaps: “Are you capable of understanding?”
What I understood in that moment is that I was not only sharing a peaceful morning with the horses, I was as much a part of the morning’s composition as they were – even though I was in a car and, therefore, somewhat isolated from full involvement. But even as the fact of my isolation occurred to me, I chanced to wonder if it was simply time for a car – any car – to pass by in order to assure the integrity of the moment.
Whichever it was, it came to me in a moment of epiphany that I was serving as witness to a display of the sort of peace and grace that is only possible on a late fall morning when mankind and the land, having worked in concert for so long, near the culmination of their yearly work; that I was being treated to a vision of the moments just prior to apogee, when all of the things necessary to the final moment of balance were approaching their respective peaks. And, at least to me, that comprehension seemed sufficient to satisfy both the spirit of the day and all of my needs for its navigation.
