Lingering Autumn

I feel most honored to be able to share with you some very touching and thought provoking words, followed by some breathtaking photos.

Following text and photographs are © October, 2001 Timothy B. Yarrow.

Timothy, I thank you for allowing me to put this up.

God Bless.

~Lingering Autumn~

   Though the peak foliage is just now passing to the south of my home, the astounding autumn colors of 2001 continue to linger, and I've been out taking photographs, making time where none existed. Though the fall school schedule is busy, I felt an irresistible pull to be outdoors. This past Monday typifies both the joyous serendipity and the vexing time management concerns this most extraordinary fall season has created. On Monday, I finished school early, and left at 1:00 for what I expected would be the normal 40 minute drive home.
   As luck would have it, Monday was indescribably beautiful. A liberal fleet of cumulus schooners navigated an azure sky, tacking eastward, and though a stiff wind snorted 'round the high hill-tops, only a gentle breeze stirred in the lower valleys. The temperature in the mid 60's felt agreeable in shorts, and every tree on every hill near and far was blazing with saturated red, yellows, and oranges. It was a stupendous day. As has been the custom this fall, the back seat and trunk of my car holds camera gear of every description. On a whim, I pulled out the Vermont Gazetteer (an extremely well detailed series of maps of the entire state) and sidetracked up into the hills for what I assumed would be a 20 minute detour on my drive home.
   Five hours later, the sun finally sank below the farthest mountain range, and it was finally time to turn homewards. I'd driven less than 6 miles, and had carefully shot another 2 rolls of film of the exquisite Vermont landscapes during this continuing once-in-a-lifetime fall color show. Not for the first time I thought again how lucky I am to live in a place who's physical beauty I love almost as deeply as the civil liberties that have been so fiercely protected by this small and proud state.
   I sit now at my desk in a contemplative mood. It is dark outside. The leaves in the yard rustle where the night breeze touches them. The Big Dipper and north star hang outside the window, steady companions in the October sky. Inside the living room, a hot flame rolls around slowly in the wood stove, a gentle warmth soaking through the room. In a part of the world well known for the beauty of the fall season, this has been a never to be repeated bench-mark year. And I sit and think about what the possible meaning of this in light of everything else that has occurred this fall.
   How is it that a small corner of the world can at once suffer so muchloss, and experience so much beauty? Does extreme bad somehow attract extreme good? The September 11 attacks on America took so much, changed so much, and yet this astounding fall season in Vermont stands to remind me that much good remains in the world. But this unsatisfactory realization leaves so much unexplained....and that feels frustrating.
   I still have no answers to these most persistent of life's little questions. Yet despite the events from this fall, at night my dreams are not of horror and despair, but of gentle travel through serene and beautiful landscapes painted in Renoir's brilliant impressionistic brush strokes. And while I feel somewhere between confused and sad when I contemplate world events and my inability to formulate a meaningful answer, underneath everything I realize that most of it is out of my control, and that causes me to feel a strange sense of peace. In the end, it seems that the best any of us can do is to love our family and friends, and freely share our gifts at every opportunity we have...share with family and friends and neighbors and strangers. I don't know much, but I do know that a another gift in a long series of gifts has been delivered to me this fall: a rare glimpse of a world as startling clear and beautiful as God ever made it. And I am blessed with some ability to understand deeply what I am looking at and to appreciate at least a little bit what it means. Yes, winter is coming, and with it, a lot of time to remember that life is sweet even as it is sometimes bitter. Meanwhile, I enjoy every precious moment I've been gifted with.
   And I guess that is the best answer I have. That people, indeed the world,can be ugly, violent and brutal, even when benevolent, charitable, and kind. The world is rich with contradictions. But more than anything, I remember a poem I feel like I have known forever and one that I love deeply.......... a poem that describes exceptionally well that life is bitter, and sweet, and not always easy, but is always rich with the existence of some divine being in the smallest of things. And too, the poem seems to describe how life eventually turns full circle - ending even as it starts. On a sun-shiny day during this most resplendent and terrible October, that simple idea seems most fitting in this beautiful little corner of the world known as Vermont....

Glory be to God for dappled things -

For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh fire-coal chestnut falls; Finches wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

For all things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled, (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers forth who's beauty is past change:

Praise Him.

- Gerard Manly Hopkins