Spring or fall?

Today I was struck by the way the colors could almost be spring rather than fall. We're just at the precise indeterminate balance point... The few remaining greens are thin and sparse, and even the reds and russets have faded to a shade that could be the color of new leaves budding instead of old ones falling. The light, too, in the late afternoon-- a gentler, warmish day today-- could have been a blush of spring. It made me think about my mother. Something about cycles, and an equivalence between the seasons and the ages of (wo)man, so that old age is like the autumn drawing into winter, and just as fall can be mistaken for spring, so too old age has its kinship with childhood. My mother loves her wind-up bunny rabbit that can hop hop hop on the breakfast table: it can keep her entertained for a surprisingly long time. She's 87. And today at lunch, as we were talking about the birds at the bird feeder, species we've never seen before here (a red-bellied woodpecker!) and whether it's to do with climate change that they come further north now, and whether it's a bad thing because we have interfered with nature, and Mother says, "Well, humans are part of nature too. We are part of nature, and, we watch it." A kind of wisdom I would never have expected from her. Well, I didn't realize till I was almost middle-aged that my mother is someone who always kept track of the phases of the moon. "Oh yes, I'm a moon-watcher," she said. Does your mother watch the moon?

Then the duck pond was very busy with Canada geese today. There have been no geese for the last few weeks, leaving the ducks peacefully in possession. Did these reverse their migration and come back north, or are they a later group on their way south? I notice again how the v-shaped wake of ripples behind each bird as it swims is the same v shape as the formation of geese as they fly. If there are two ducks swimming together the ripples make a more complicated pattern.

The humans were also out in force today, rather distractingly. Parents endlessly trying to get their children to smile for the camera. Maybe they are trying to get the pictures for their Christmas cards, it seems more like a photo shoot than a visit to the ducks. Why are we humans so obsessed with our own images? The camera the successor to the mirror....

And the pond: gateway to mother earth. Since writing that in a posting I've been tuning in to her more and more. A strong power spot, wild and safe, where so many species including our own come together day after day, week after week, year after year. A goddess spot. So easy to experience her as goddess. Do you want to join me here sometime? Probably it doesn't work to have class here, but come on the blue bus, together or separately, send me a text and I'll meet you if I can. Come in a group? Come on your own?