Field Notes Archive - October 2023
Back into the Woods, Back within Words
New Season, New Shifts
Our acreage only contains small fractions of what could be considered forest, but by October those wild spaces become my solace from summer’s chaos.
Eastern Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens)
Throughout the sunniest days, the woods are as busy as we are, crawling with flora and fauna in a density I don’t dare enter.
On the other side of the year, in spring, ticks sit at the threshold, eagerly reaching their legs towards any life they can leech, a tiny barrier to entry we’ve become attuned to.
So the sweet spot starts now, when warm and cold heartbeats begin their recoil towards hibernation.
I too feel summoned, often by a magnetic pull that cuts through cold mornings. As our 7th cycle of seasons on this property comes to a close, I find myself below thinning tree canopies, still quite lush but losing more mass each day. This is where I lean into my most mystical self, acknowledging the magic in a tiny flash of orange that pulls my gaze to the ground. There I meet a set of newt eyes, glassy globes the size of mustard seeds that re-attune me to the minutiae.
Above, there are globs of sticky, translucent yellowy sap oozing from dull bark with a shimmer. A honey bee lands on my shoulder, the odd fallen feather points me in a new direction. Mushrooms are seemingly everywhere in various states of fruiting and falling, often surrounded by slugs. Their quiet is cut by a doe who dares me to continue towards her fawns, then chipmunks and tiny birds who make the sounds of much larger monsters, sending my heart thumping in my throat.
In the woods there’s just as much fear as fairy tale, but I try to eclipse the former with a firm belief in the latter.
I aim to touch at least 10 trees when I’m in the woods, just to see what they have to say. There are the colossal ones I can’t wrap my arms around, pairs who have fused into one, and bulging bends and shapes that defy design.
Some are chatty, others stoic.
Once in a while they pulse with energetic conversation, pestering me about why it’s been so long since I visited. The trees don’t actually speak, in case it needed to be said, but in my mind’s ear I do hear some translation of their individual hums.
All uniqueness, however, is undone by the mycorrhizal web that connects all trees, and more, underground.
Eons of information sparkle there beneath my feet, inaccessible and yet somehow always reassuring.
Back towards open skies a woolly bear caterpillar walks with a wiggle beside me, perhaps predicting the weather with its colors. I wonder too about our own winter ahead, as each season since we’ve been here has been radically different in terms of our agricultural choices. First floral and annual, then perennial and forage focused.
Most recently willow has won our attention as basketry booms.
All throughout, the woods have stood as witness, the only portion of the farm that hasn’t really changed since we arrived.
Against their steadiness I feel immeasurably changed by our time on this land, and yet so much of the shifting has felt more like shedding than metamorphosis.
Before the farm it’s as if I’ve my proverbial petals were obscured from light, thwarting full bloom. But as the woods approach their most bare moment, I feel their assured exposure reinforcing and cheering on mine.
Originally published on October 1, 2023
Pressing Matters
Cider & Sky Glitter
This is the first fall that the sun room within our home stands complete.
Besides the extra square footage, which was desperately needed, the space is flush with the most wondrous windows. The top row, which reaches high up to the ceiling, is especially spectacular. The other day during sundown my eye was pulled there, where an explosion of falling leaves was furiously swirling. We were entranced by this sky glitter, a sight that before the sun room would have been completely obscured.
This past week did not feel especially autumnal until that moment. The temperatures swung high into the 80s, bringing things like snake encounters back into reality and putting my walks in the woods on hiatus. We picked and Dan pressed apples for days throughout the hovering heat, which is not unusual. Many past cider pressings have been sweltering and joined by throngs of yellow jackets, but as the sweet and sour juices flowed the ideals of October were put to the test.
I often think of the stereotypical fall fantasy of crisp leaves and perfectly brisk air, which wash away the roller coaster of reality. The truth is comprised of blurry, undecipherable days that vacillate between July’s worst and November’s best. By the time we reach bare trees, rotting Jack-o-Lanterns, and frost filled mornings, the autumn of our imaginations returns to an apparition.
When I used to teach yoga I would offer a suggestion, mostly for my own good, to stop wishing for something different. On the mat I often feel desperate for more vigor, or anxious for its release, a propensity I noticed many students shared. And a common conversation topic before and after class was complaints about the weather - how cold or hot it was, or wet or dry, or vice versa. The pervasive theme was that we’re not satisfied with what’s here and happening right now.
After the sky glitter came cool rain. Overnight half of all green had gone yellow or orange, and sweaters replaced our sweaty t-shirts. Piles of apple skins and their squeezed dry flesh are now sinking into ever-softening soil as bubbling carboys of cider sit in Dan’s office.
Just a few days ago branches held those hot fruit, and just a few days from now even more shifts will have settled in. But rather than becoming preoccupied with advancing to the next frame, dazzled by the dreams of what could be, should be, I’ll intend instead to immerse myself in the nuances of now.
The full breadth of fall is found there.
Originally published on October 8, 2023
Before the Frost
Threshold Patterns
Petals are surrendering their vibrancy, eggs are moving from internal to external sanctuaries, and seeds are naturally dispersing in both heavy-handed and featherweight fashion.
Elsewhere berries are still bursting red, zinnias bloom with freshly layered perfection, and somehow a fawn still has spots beneath their shadowy brown. These benchmarks span along a wide spectrum of life and death, and all that’s in between, but each is heading in the same direction.
For the moment, though, these wildly different manifestations coexist in pre-frost liminality.
There is roughly 6 months between first frost and last frost, and vice versa. This splitting of the year down the middle by mother nature’s hand provides a bookending that no other chosen date or holiday can.
We may say it’s spring, but until the frozen fingers of winter finally release their grip much of life cannot burst forth with confident freedom. And here in the fall the game is to go on living as long as possible before the finality of cold clamps back down. It seems as if some flora and fauna surrender early, while others play chicken.
For us the first frost is notable but not exactly personal. Our heating bill may reflect its arrival, along with our wardrobe, and of course the willow will soon go dormant, which is our cue to harvest, but we do not literally feel the earth solidifying under our feet.
Modern life is a perpetual veil that separates the natural world from us, inside and out. No matter how much I witness with all my senses: the classic leaf crunch beneath my boot, bird songs and frog splashes that cut through silence, smoky aromas and windy shivers... every day ends in the comforts of home.
This dynamic between witness and wilderness is not one I wish to undo, but within this threshold moment before the first frost I feel my own benchmarks coming into focus.
We’ve spent over 13 years with our two dogs, nearly half of that time on this land. Foggy Blossom has become a basketry farm. Tenures and connections of all kinds are ending or just beginning. There are new and old goals and passions taking shape in my life as others fade away.
I am closer to 40 than 30.
As much as we’ve intended for our lives to go in certain directions, personally and professionally, nothing ever adheres to strict plans.
Time moves through us and us through it, and only in retrospect does a story become clear.
More than ever, though, and maybe this is the wisdom that comes with age, we are becoming much better acquainted with our unique cycles, eccentricities, and authentic desires.
There is no use spending so much energy witnessing the minutiae of nature if you’re not using it as a mirror for self-reflection.
All around is evidence of assuredness, even if the unripe raspberry appears foolish in the face of unavoidable frost. Until the moment when that first chill sweeps through, what else is there to do but persist? There is no degree below 40 in the foreseeable forecast, so the figs will go on ripening. The bees will continue burying their faces in basil flowers and the view outside our window will stay vibrant.
We’ll do our own end-of-year habits and rituals ahead of the inevitable silence that sweeps in with winter, trusting that our shedding, collecting, reflecting and planning is informed with just as much wilderness as our own wisdom.
Originally published on October 15, 2023
Thoughts on Unfurling Forms
The Shapes, Textures & Forms of Fall
Rigidity, bends, and contortions are emerging.
Unseen comprises of space made during summer are revealing their final forms through increasingly vacant branches. Amongst that armature abandoned nests loosen their edges into ever-uncoiling shells, sometimes revealing pitifully cloudy pearls of unfulfilled life. Up close and far away colors continue to redden, dull, blur.
Fruit still hangs suspended over unfrosted ground. Behind speckled skin waterlogged flesh waits, unknowingly destined for a bookmarked pear frangipane tart. Green figs stand erect and taut, their solid insides not yet yielding beneath a gentle squeeze. A prayer for purple is plead, a sure sign of softening within.
Carpets of leaves camouflage the wood’s paths, but elsewhere skeletal starkness begs for observance of its bones. The call comes from within a snake’s hollow torso, or the Paw Paw’s trim and trained trunk, looking like both coat rack and rib-cage. A fallen group of trees plunge their limbs into the ground, grasping it in one unified claw. Here in the middle of fall the scales tip between undressed and fully obscured, pulling focus in either direction.
Some leaves fall fresh and flat while others wither with a dramatic flair before allowing their death to drift. Opposing their dehydration is plump and verdant moss, rising in spongy glory above the damp decay. In the field overgrown grasses swoop in curls and waves, styled by the wind on their way to becoming fully flattened. These shapes, textures, and forms flesh out characters from an acreage that is easily anthropomorphized.
Deciphering this visual language of the land is an exercise in imagination, and perhaps all of these flowery words and emotional attributes serve only my own desire to connect. The frog will never know it was seen by 47 people in an Instagram story, nor will the mantis understand how her vulnerable egg sac construction has been forever solidified into pixels by my lens. The hickory nut is oblivious when it’s captured in my sketchbook instead of a squirrel’s cache.
Deciphering this visual language of the land is an exercise in imagination, and perhaps all of these flowery words and emotional attributes serve only my own desire to connect. The frog will never know it was seen by 47 people in an Instagram story, nor will the mantis understand how her vulnerable egg sac construction has been forever solidified into pixels by my lens. The hickory nut is oblivious when it’s captured in my sketchbook instead of a squirrel’s cache.
Originally published on October 22, 2023
Incapable of Continuity
The Lost Frost
This past Monday was, at last, encapsulated in an inaugural frosty layer.
Crystallized petals held their pigments for one final, fantastical morning. Now they droop, brown and listless, shadows on their way to sludge. This transformation has appeared extra startling under a stretch of 70+ degree days that quickly made the freeze forgettable. You’d hardly believe it even happened were it not for the sepia that has swept through the fields. Still some, like lavender, have kept their looks, while a fair number of fruits have yet to fall. Timelines fractured by meaningful mercury.
The warm days allowed for overdue tidying of overgrown spaces, and computer work executed al fresco. Orange tones everywhere appeared more fiery under the sun. Snakes slithered, seeds scattered. Sweaters and slippers lay unworn.
These writings are so often framed by weather, my preferred format to synthesis a day through. Invisible temperatures shape every action. Clouds change the mood on a dime - parting for stark, sunny shadows, or hovering to generate a grisly gray. I overhear conversations from those never satisfied with a forecast incapable of continuity.
As trick-or-treaters get ready for their quests, I remember my own evenings spent collecting. Visions of my dad’s flashlight illuminating dark parts of the sidewalk. The one house with king-sized candy bars. Bulging sweatpants underneath a poodle skirt, an unwanted turtleneck up top. So many Halloweens spent with added layers to ensure warmth, often deteriorating the overall effect of a costume.
All easily forgotten, however, once frozen fingers and rosy cheeks gorged on goodies. These vivid memories of dark autumnal evenings spent outside are likely enhanced by the rarity of such an excursion.
These days leaving home after dark is not a common occurrence, nor a preference. Sunrise photo sessions are more the norm, where cheeks still flush and the world is captured by a cold shutter finger. Today the rains have returned, along with a full moon who appears to be ushering the frost back in.
In the coming days candy may be procured under temperature-controlled store lighting in far less magical fashion than those bundled ‘90s nights. Through each moment more will change, some will stay the same.
Impermanence ever-present.
