Happy Halloween!

Screech owls moan in the yellowing
Mulberry trees. Field mice scurry,
Preparing their holes for winter.
Midnight we cross an old battlefield.
The moonlight shines cold on white bones.

Tu Fu
Zen page-a-day calendar

nor'easter

Nor'easter blew through the area last night. Utility trucks and blinking lights on the roads this morning. Two good friends are driving to Florida today for the winter. We probably won't see them again until May. There are many autumnal transitions which are taking place, and this is one that has escaped my attention as blog-worthy material until this morning. We will miss them.

Red lanterns

Red lanterns have lighted my way on many a pleasant hunt in many a region, but I think that blackberries must first have learned how to glow in the sand counties of central Wisconsin. Along the little boggy streams of these friendly wastes, called poor by those whose own lights barely flicker, the blackberries burn richly red on every sunny day from first frost to the last day of the season. Every woodcock and every partridge has his own private solarium under these briars...
At sunset on the last day of the grouse season, every blackberry blows out his light. I do not understand how a mere bush can thus be infallibly informed about the Wisconsin statutes, nor have I ever gone back the next day to find out. For the ensuing eleven months the lanterns glow only in recollection.

October
A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold

stubble

Signs for the Pittsford Haunted House and Corn Maze on Route 7. Wood's all stacked and ready for winter. Like everything else, corn is turning from green to brown. It is also turning into silage as fields are reduced to stubble.

So lonely
I leave the hut
and gaze out-
the leaves of rice plants
bending like waves in autumn wind
Ryokan
Zen page-a day calendar

leaves

It's been a very interesting fall foliage season. The historical peak of the season is on Columbus Day which this year was on October 9th. The foliage wasn't even close to peak at that time. It was at least a week later. Was that due to a warm and sunny October or the long term effects of global warming, probably a little of both.
Both Allyn and I noticed that many of the leaves weren't turning this year, they were just drying up, and falling off the trees. This happened early in the process and was certainly due to the very dry conditions. Our conclusion was that it was going to be a bad year for the leaf peepers. But driving around here recently you see that the turning leaves are beautiful. We've had a string of beautiful foliage years, and this would certainly have to count among them.
We're probably a little past peak right now, but there's still plenty of beautiful viewing in store. The leaves by now have thinned out on many of the trees and there's a beautiful contrast between the leaves and the dark branches underneath.

Leaves will start to drop from the tops while some remain on the bottoms of the trees. Sometimes these are among the most beautiful.

I've written a lot about this season of seasons here in Vermont, and I plan to be writing more. I feel privileged to witness this wonderful transformation year after year.

plague

Still lots of beautiful leaves out there. Season of vines. You see them climbing up many supporting cables on telephone poles. Silage trucks active on Rte. 7. It spills over the tops of the trucks onto the road and the cars behind. Seems like a plague of green locusts coming out of hiding. Woods Market closed for the season.

beautiful day

4:30 Meditation
6:30 Breakfast, sliver of moon and planet Venus peeking through the dining room window.
7:00 Out the door, sun coming up over Camel's Hump.
It's a beautiful day.

hard frost

Got home last night, and the stars were shining. It was a very clear night as evidenced by the fact that I was able to see the Andromeda Galaxy unaided. That always seems like a miracle to me.
A clear night usually means one thing this time of year, a frost. Sure enough we had a hard one last night. Many of the observed changes in the natural world are gradual and subtle. Not so the first hard frost of the year. Had to scramble to dig the scraper out of the back of the car and get busy on the windshield in the dark before heading to meditation this morning. I'm afraid that the basil, parsley, and tomatoes which have been merrily growing around the house for months now are done for. They may be gone for good, and I'm gone for a week.

leaves and needles

Fallen leaves floating down the Ira Creek. They end up covering the bottom of the brook this time of year. Sometimes they clog up the hose that provides water to the cows in the pasture. Pine needles turning color and coming off the trees in a manner similar to the deciduous trees.

After the leaves fall
in the village at the foot
of Ogura Peak,
one can see through the
tree branches
the moon shining in
the clear.
Saigyo
Zen page-a-day calendar

essence of wildness

Yesterday I looked up and saw 4-5 very large flocks of geese heading south for the winter. I don't know how many there were, 100-200. Everything stopped. Their calls are the essence of wildness. When one experiences a moment like this, the feeling is like you're being filled up with helium.
It's easy to despair over the state of this weary world at present. But the skies are filled with wonder and beauty and I'm grateful for that.

Wild Geese

Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

foliage

Let's face it, the part of Vermont that I live in is a backwater. There's just not a lot that is happening that is on the forefront of world attention. There are a couple of areas, however, in which little old Vermont is world famous. When people think of maple syrup, they think of Vermont. When they think of fall foliage, Vermont is at the top of the list.
Yesterday was Columbus Day which is usually considered the peak of the foliage season. I had occasion to go down to Manchester, Vermont. It was packed with tourists. I walked by one family that was speaking Chinese I think. Even though it has not been a banner year for color, and even though the peak seems to be some days away this year, the colors are still beautiful. Sometimes it is easy to take for granted that people literally come from thousands of miles away just to see what is right out your own back door.

moon clouds and leaves

On Thursday night, Owen and I watched the Harvest Moon rise over East Aurora. On Saturday afternoon we watched the wind blowing the flags at Fisher Price, the clouds in the sky, and the leaves in the street.

Shine like the whole universe is yours.
Rumi
Zen page-a-day calendar

moon

Got home after a long day just as the sun was setting, the nearly full moon was rising over the mountains in the east. Of course I wanted to get a photo (which didn't work out on my phone) so I waited for the moon to clear the line of oak trees along one of the lower fields. I could see the moon through the leaves which somehow accentuated the sense of motion as the moon kept rising. But in reality, of course, the moon isn't rising. What I was seeing was the effects of the revolving of planet Earth, and because of the interplay between the moon and the tree leaves, the feeling of spinning through space was stark. The moon wasn't moving, I was. I felt that I better grab on to something. The full moon, the "Harvest" moon is tonight.

As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose color, thin as a bubble or a ghost moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the  two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world.
In that singular light, every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old  pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.
My Antonia
Willa Cather

pellets

Pellets for wood stoves for sale in hardware stores. Sounds of chainsaws and gunfire in the woods. First frost yesterday morning. Flocks of geese heading south for the winter.

Set wide the window.
Let me drink the day.
Edith Wharton
Zen page-a-day calendar

Maine

Vermont is beautiful this time of year. But so is this place.