One Fall Day

One Fall day, I went to my parent's farm. In my photoblog, below the picture of the red paperbox, is a photo of the top meadow above the point. A geographic point, for reference, is a projecting or tapering piece of land. If you blow that picture up you would be able to see the barn that sits to the left of the gate, even though the gate is not visible. From where I stood, if you were to look directly to your left, there would be a path/road which goes between the hunting cabin and the top meadow. There is a also a small pond a few steps further down the hill. On this particular day, I took my son and oldest nephew on a hike. My intention that day was to find a piece of wood suitable to making a wand. I wanted oak and they are plentiful. We walked up the hollow, passed the pond and up to pond meadow. This is where I asked for and received permission to take a long wand-looking branch from a white oak. My dad came up on his 4-wheeler and took the boys back to the house with him. As I walked from the hunting cabin to the top meadow, I saw a doe. She seemed quite flustered as I stalked her. As though I could hurt her at this point. The following is an excerpt of a letter which I wrote to AZ that evening - "After I finished stalking the poor doe, I circled back to the small pond hidden in the shadows. Sometimes you will find a deer there but there were none. That trails opens out onto the largest flat where hay grows in the summertime. Now, it is so green, like a painting, the flat ringed by russets and deep golds, not the yellows of the maples, but a gold, like the chesnut or even beech. They stick up like drying paint brushes against the sky, the sun shining but not hot like July or August. An Indian Summer sun. You can hear the wind in the valley and the trees breath deeply and begin to sway with its rhythm. At first, its just a breeze on your face until the entire forest expels it like the breath of the gods and it lifted the hair off my shoulders. I'm standing on top of that mountain and I feel like I can fly. Its so perfect, it hurts. Its so beautiful, I never want it to end. I wish you could have been there. I wish you could have inhaled the scent of a dying Fall, Summer is long past gone. The scent of a freshly cut oak branch, musty leaves, a hint of snow. I wish you could have soaked the sun into your skin with me. I wish you could have twirled around on that mountaintop with me because no one could see us. Then walk slowly down to the gate and then run back up to the top of the hill again, just to see it all again, just to feel like you were King of the World." I wrote a poem about Fall which my German father translated into German for me. It's hanging on the wall in my house and I do have a copy on my other computer. Alas, you will have to wait for that. It reminds me a lot of what I wrote to AZ that day although it was written ten years earlier. That's all I have to say today. May you have a King of the World day!