Step right up — Step right up, folks, to Father Sky and Mother Earth’s magical, mystical, midsummer madness! See the night-sky shimmer with light and life! Feel the heat and humidity smack you in your face with the very force of life itself! Watch Earth and Sky in their yearly dance — teeming with multitudinous life-forms! Make hay while the sun shines! Hurry, hurry, hurry! (Sounds like summer to me).
Seasonal change — August is generally a time when – literally — the fruits of our labors are getting ready to be harvested and when the first faint glimmers of the coming of the change of seasons are becoming apparent — the seeds of thistles fly in the late summer wind and the first insects and birds begin to follow their ancestral urge to migrate south. The young bucks antlers start to grow back and fawns spots begin to fade. Late summer is both a time when life is peaking and when we can first see that seasonal change is near.
Meadows and fields flowering — Most of the flowering has now switched solidly from forest to meadow and field (with the exception of myriad mushrooms finally filling the forest with fungi)(?). Present now in our open spaces are beebalm, goldenrods (not allergens), ragweed (the real allergy culprit), Queen Anne’s lace, wild strawberries, wild blackberries and raspberries, long-stem buttercups, the clovers, red and white and many others — most notably, milkweed. The intertwined, symbiotic dependence of milkweeds and monarchs should teach us about our own dependence on the varied elements of the world around us. Also, perhaps generations of monarchs have passed down stories of these lush green summer fields of ours — their Avalon. I wonder, in the winter, as they huddle together on their fir trees in the cool mountains, do monarchs regale each other with stories of their ancestral milkweed patches and dream of frolicking in these milkweed-rich, sunny leas? Why not, I say.
Time of great change — Summer is a time of great change, phenomenal transformation. The milkweed plant of early summer is not the same plant now. The red-tail that builds its nest in the spring is very different from the one that watches its young leave that same nest. This is also a time of change and growth for people. Summer gives us the opportunity to get outside (of ourselves?) more than we generally do. We travel more, to the shore, to visit relatives, etc. By getting out into our world we meet people we normally wouldn’t and we do things we normally wouldn’t otherwise do. All of these activities make us learn and grow (sometimes whether we like it or not). In this season we get a chance to see ourselves reflected by (in?) others, whereas in winter, because there is less light and we’re “cooped up” more, we tend to delve more inside our own self in an introspective, self-reflective manner (I think this internal seasonal balance is at least as important to people as the external change of seasons). Like the milkweed and the red-tail, it could be that by the end of the summer none of us will be exactly the same person we were at the beginning. Of course, some of us weren’t the same to begin with (?!).
Seasons cycling — Now it is hard to remember those January days when the trees were popping and the stream was crackling — just as at that point it was impossible to fully imagine everything ever getting hot and green again. I keep thinking maybe I should be bored with the cycles of the season, year after year. Not at all. In truth, I find it more exciting each year. I see new things every spring, summer, fall and winter, subtle permutations of field and forest. (For the full-length version of this, please visit the blog on my website listed below — thank you.)
Thank you all and please have a safe late summer — “Ranger” Dave Holden, call 845-594-4863 or email woodstocktrails@gmail.com; also see Dave Holden on Facebook; rangerdaveholden on Instagram or www.woodstocknytrails.com.
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