The view from my front deck is awe inspiring. Although much of my beloved forest canopy is still
clothed in the couverture verte of
late summer, balloons of vibrant hues bespeckle the vista near and far. Mother Nature has come to the end of her
reproductive season and has begun her annual change of life. Yes, the
dear Mother of our Northern Hemisphere has entered her yearly menopause.
Autumn is such a visually beautiful time of year in the Great
Smoky Mountains as the foliage dons its brilliant fall Joseph’s Coat of reds, purples, amber and orange. But the seasonal change in the Womb of the World
has its more fickle side. Recently, we
mere mortals that live in the majestic Southeast were tormented with Mother’s
emotional mood swings that started with several days of gentle weeping and
built itself up into a torrent of bawling that left many towns awash in a flood
of tears. Some lost their lives and many
others lost their homes; there are many whose lives are still disrupted,
floundering in need of assistance. To
them, I send my heartfelt prayers.
I am fortunate to live far enough north and west of her most
recent wrath, only to have mildly suffered through a week and a half of wet,
gray, cold days, with mornings of blinding fog and evenings trying to appease
my suffering dogs that were equally tortured by bloated bladders and their disdain
for rain soaked feet.
With the new season, the dawn breaks a little later each day
and the evenings seem impatient to arrive compelling the need for cold artificial
lighting that lacks the life-energizing radiance of the sun-god who is chased
from his sky-throne ever earlier each afternoon. Life slows as Mother enters her change.
Each morning I awake to her cold shoulder and quickly wrap
myself in my favorite cowl-neck sweater for the warmth and comfort I used to glean
from Ms. Nature. (Sweater? I hate that word; can’t we come up with something for those
warm over-wraps that doesn’t involve perspiration?) By the afternoon, her inevitable hot flashes will have me shedding layers
of clothing, opening windows and turning on ceiling fans. I tolerate her climatic fluctuations without
complaint. In her current state of emotional
turmoil, it is not advisable to rile the Mother’s angst; it was only last year
when she cast an angry blanket of snow across the region to spoil the Halloween
of our youngest mountain dwellers.
Yet as the emerald days of summer slip past the fleeting
