“Wild is the music of autumnal winds amongst the faded woods.”

William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)

The days grow short and the nights lengthen. I wander the woods and watch the leaves fall softly and marvel at how different each one is. 

Fall is, for Nature, a time of sowing, of scattering her bounty, of letting go of what has taken months to create, from last Spring’s bud, to new leaves and flowers, to from it and seeds. It isn’t an end at all. It is a fulfillment of Cosmic Destiny. It is just another part of The Journey. There is so much beauty and life around me and secrets to be heard if only I listen.

Deep within the fruits, nuts, and berries are the seeds of the Future. I feel it within myself.

The genetic code for each individual species is held within each tiny seed and Autumn is the time of ripening and sending these seeds out into the world so that the cycle never ends.

There are wild hickory nuts and black walnuts, pecans, and pine nuts, and seed pods galore, bursting open for the birds to eat and carry far and wide. Squirrels and chipmunks and raccoons are busy gathering and storing the abundance. I see berries of blue and pink and red and black maturing and falling. I known it is all part of the Great Mystery and I am honored to bear witness. I even spotted a wild turkey!

Everywhere I turn I see the change, the flowing of time, the turning of the Great Wheel. I feel the Purpose and the Connection.

I wander through the trees and notice that the sounds of Autumn in the woods are different. There is crispness underfoot, a crunch and a rustle of leaves. The sound of the wind as it whistles through the falling leaves has a sharpness I had not noticed before.

I walk beside the creek and watch the water carry leaves of almost indescribable colors over lichen covered rocks and down the mountainside. I feel alive and full of joy.

The sun begins to descend and I watch with wonder as the mountainside across the valley reflects the evening light and all the trees glow gold and red with a vibrancy that seems to say they know their place and their purpose and are grateful.

There are so many lessons I have yet to learn and maybe relearn as the wheel keeps turning and there is newness about and changes and facets never before seen or felt. I try to remember that Life is a Dance. It is a beautiful, graceful, and exotic dance and the steps change and the motion of my body sways to sounds I did not know existed before. I laugh when I think of the days when I used to say “I can’t dance. I don’t know how.” I reach out my hands and feel My Creator take them and I am light and I twirl and spin and I know the Future is never ending and I seem to understand that there is no need to hurry, that it isn’t going away. Every moment is as an eternity and exists forever.

Thoughts for today….
Oct 25, 2018

I shared some photographs this summer of magnolia blossoms. They were incredibly soft and delicate looking. In a few days the blossoms began to turn brown and I did not photograph those. Then yesterday I went back to the courtyard where the magnolia trees grow and found my blossom had transformed itself into seed pods and bright red seeds were forming. While I had thought its beauty passed with the dying of the bloom it was really just changing and the changes were deliberate and part of its journey. Sometimes I despair of my sadness, but I must have faith in its purpose.

Below is a quote I like…
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet