“It takes a long time to cut geranium stems with a hand tool, on a cold day, if the field of flowers is vast. Time slowing down brings us to size, as well, and this happens for gardeners, which may explain the narcotic value of base labor. It’s not so easy, though on its face, the work is repetitive, and trite. Neither is time travel a walk in the park, so I’ve heard. Here, the more mundane points of access are proven using only hands, muscles, eyes, and heart. Bravo, kudos, to the end of autumn. Pressing in with some urgency, even panic, to try the mettle of our discipline & fortitude. Perhaps I’ve grown addicted to being caught between. On one side, the grace of clear skies, and warming temperatures; on the other, a dominating force that moves unpredictably. Praise be to the inclement, potent, silencing moods of weather. It in turn, moves us. Standing in front of my truck tailgate at the start of my work day, I watch as it slowly floats down, an innovation of truck engineering according to experts who’ve been bothered by the old-fashioned, wear & tear slamming of metal. I’m duly scanning the sky for aberrations. My long johns are already annoying me, chaffing at the waist, all mixed up with shirt tails, and suspenders. My choice of boots has its pros and cons. Layered in down, and wool and most practically something poly, I tug and pull, and try to get comfortable. With no one around, it hardly matters. This is part of what I love about the decline of gardening season. I have six pairs of gloves, including the rubber, and the synthetic, along with what is just tough enough, yet thin so that I can still feel. It’s a dance we all do when in protection mode, yet unwilling to lose hope or joy, in the face of coming loss. A quiet fight, a solemn lift of the spirit that can only be won by trying, or trying again. The snow has come and gone once already, and traces still litter the dell. Mountain water still seeps & pools, pumping sustenance into plant matter, despite its new pattern of freezing & thawing, and painting with frost. I remember everything I loved without knowing I did, in the fall, with a poignant ache. The ease with which I peeled moss off rocks, or tossed earthworms away from the path of my trowel, or tumbled earth, into an aesthetic smoothness. The free lunches on the warm lawn, where I reveled in taste, so pleased with a sandwich, as if on a throne. To have life reduced to such poise, is a time travel worth marketing. We are the biology that can still do so. Now come the darkening late afternoons, full of scarcity, and lack. A photo-sensitive light fixture tripping off, to illuminate no one being home, is the beginning of winter. In this world, the clink, and chink of stone masons is hard pressed to go much past four. I must not let my tools be lost in the night. These last runs of the Gator to the far flung dumping grounds are filled with the pep of racing against the inevitable. A scarf, an extra hat, a wish to see everything before it once again goes under, is fall’s chilling elixir. I leave the motor running, as I jump onto a tangle of what used to be so colorful, so alive, now straw-like, to unclamp the mechanisms, to let loose my final load. It’s a crescent moon, tonight, pinned like a child’s moon, on a piece of black construction paper. The pond has been emptied. A giant back-hoe looms ghostlike, on its disappearing edge, so near to where chairs hosted parties, and dream-like bonfires, when all seemed well. For it was, and is, in this timeless realm of collusion. I have a need to see what I saw, to believe that change is nothing to fear, as it all comes back around, if not now, but when it does. And it will. Even as the most surreal moments of my life flood back on me, rhythmically stabbing me to the sound of migrating geese, I can yet master this moment of my despair. I am no more stuck in a pocket of sad recollections, than a slave to beeping technology. So different from men who will never walk the land they’ve bought with their fortunes, I am in my Valhalla. This is why we came here; this is why we thrive.”
