September 17, 2008

•    After Hurricane Ike lost his way and blew through
  our corner of the Ozarks Saturday night, toppling trees and stealing
  electricity from our neighbors, we were ready for the gift of blue
  skies and cooler temperatures that Sunday brought us.
     Doyle and I
  loaded up our big dog and headed south on Highway 7 to the Buffalo
  River Trail at Pruitt. Early fall was in the air, in the fresh breeze,
  and the sunlight that seems more golden than it is any other time of
  year.
     You had to look sharp, but you could spot the first colors of
  fall along the damp trail. A bright-red scrap of Virginia creeper that
  had lighted next to a fern at the base of a hickory tree. A maple leaf,
  grapefruit-colored, floating in a puddle near a spring.
  Narrow walnut
  leaves fluttering down in the gentle wind, glinting gold in the
  sun-rays that pierced the trees, sparking against the green woods like
  lightning bugs. Fallen hickory nuts still in their husks, nestled
  together like a clutch of tiny green pumpkins on the ground.
  

  

   A
  storm-blown oak branch, loaded with green acorns held tightly in their
  little wooden cups.
     Colorful fungi took center stage in the woods
  drama that post-storm afternoon. Delicate miniature trumpets in
  jack-o-lantern colors.
  

  

  Creamy clam-shells, with carefully drawn arching
  stripes of brown, trimming a fallen log.
  

  

  A living tree serving as host
  to a battalion of white fungal half-circles marching up and down its
  trunk. Toadstools skirted in rusty-red with yellow petticoats — beige
  mushrooms sprinkled with darker brown, like nutmeg on custard —
  browny-orange flowers of fungi ruffling over a fallen log —
  

  

   spindly
  stalks as yellow as egg-yolk reaching upward — delicate white stag-horn
  stems, growing in a coral-like bundle on the forest floor.
  
  

     I delight
  in each new sign of fall I see. Watching the seasons shift has always
  been a joy to me, and I never can decide which change I welcome more —
  the one from summer to autumn, or from winter to spring.
     This time
  of year, I'm compelled to watch carefully. There's a dogwood tree in
  front of the Harrison schools’ Central Office I've been keeping my eye
  on for several weeks, ever since it started showing rusty-red in
  August, long before I spotted new color on any of its brothers and
  sisters. When I drive past Maplewood Cemetery on my way to church, I
  spy patches of orange and even red already showing in a maple tree here
  and there. I gather these small proofs that fall is really and truly
  arriving, and paste them into a mental scrapbook that for some reason
  gives me great satisfaction.
     Why is it so gratifying, to watch the
  seasons change? I think part of the reason is because it reassures us
  that the more things change, the more they remain the same, as the
  French proverb goes.
     We delight in change, and yet, underneath that change, we like for there to be things we can rely on to remain the same.
      Like
  a child who insists that the Christmas tree always be put up in the
  same corner from year to year, we like for there to be some certainties
  we can count on.
     Hurricanes may rage and whip up the waves on the
  Gulf of Mexico, but the tides still ebb and flow on the same eternal
  schedule they've always followed, obedient to the powerful tug of the
  moon, regardless of the drama being played out on the surface of the
  sea.
     It's a fresh season, a brand-new autumn — and yet we can know
  that the maples will always flame out at the cemetery, and pansies and
  mums will appear at roadside stands and in pots on front porches, and
  the dogwood leaves will turn rusty. The hickory nuts and walnuts will
  fall. Continuity in the midst of transition.
     Things change in our
  lives. Some delight, and some are hard for us to bear. Babies are born.
  Loved ones die. Jobs disappear. New careers begin. Storms destroy.
  Couples fall in love. Marriages end. Trees fall. New homes are built.
  Sons and daughters go off to war. Families move from place to place. A
  child starts to school. New presidents are elected.
     But no matter
  what happens in our lives, underneath the surface changes, the great
  wheel of the year still turns, just like it always has. Winter melts
  into spring. Spring blossoms into summer. Summer glows into fall. Fall
  freezes into winter.
     Our planet revolves around the sun. Days grow shorter. Leaves burn with color. The year tips downhill.
     And Life goes on, cupped gently in the loving Hands of the One who started the wheel turning.

  "Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
  There is no shadow of turning with Thee.
  Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not.
  As Thou hast been thou forever wilt be.
  Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
  Morning by morning new mercies I see;
  All I have needed Thy hand hath provided
  Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.
  Summer and winter and spring-time and harvest,
  Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
  Join with all nature in manifold witness
  To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love."
  (Thomas. O. Chisholm)

  By Celia DeWoody
  Copyright 2008 Harrison Daily Times
  Harrison, Arkansas
  Published Sept. 17, 2008
  
   

  • 11:09 pm
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