Snow geese on the way home

 We returned to Calgary in mid Sept to vote. The last day we also had our first really chilly night after a summer of drought and heat. We had hoped to see the huge flocks of snow geese sweeping south but that is always a tossup between when they appear and when we have to leave. We were really pleased to see some on the drive home. 

"Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - 
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things."

from "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

Fall drive to Drum

 

"Even the west, beyond the tinged rooftops

smells of cobalt"

from Natural/Unnatural 

by Margaret Avison

from Snow Towards Evening by Melville Crane

"From some invisible blossoming tree

Millions of petals, cool and white.

Drifted and blew,

Lifted and flew,

Fell with the falling night."

 

Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park Oct 9th

“But when the sun drops closer to the earth, the cold of the earth runs to it from the water and causes all green things to dry up. And because the sun has dropped closer to the earth, the days are short, and it is winter.”

― Hildegard of Bingen, 

I am not sure the quote is scientifically accurate but it is a nice conceit. It is still fall here though. 

https://defendabparks.ca/

Trip to Drum - Fall colours

Wring all your memories for the future

Out of this hour and this warm wind-

Hands clasped tight, eyes gazing over

The valley of autumn choked with sun,

from The Soldier's Settlement

by John Glassco

Trip to Drum - Dancing Through the Last Days of Sept

 

"Open up the window

I'm breathing in the last of September

I can feel the wind blow

and the late summer sky is like a giant ember

everything is turning into gold"

Last Days of September by Henrik Nagy feat Frida Wallin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zSdBF1ywKs

Road trip to the mountains - rock

 

 "The rocks are not so close akin to us as the soil; they are one more remove from us; but they lie back of all, and are the final source of all. Time, geologic time, looks out at us from the rocks as from no other objects in the landscape."

John Burroughs

Fall landscape and poetry

"I don’t know, but I do know that one thing that interests me is being in a landscape and trying to attach a language to something that you could never attach a language to."

An Interview with Michael McGriff at Poetry Daily
http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_evans_mcgriff.php

"My blood fills with so much iron I'm pulled

to a place in the hard earth where the wind 

grinds over the ridge bearing the wheels of tanker trucks 

oiling the access roads, where deer ruin the last of the plums, 

where the sloughs shrink back to their deepest channels, 

and I can turn away from nothing."

from Iron

by Michael McGriff

Heading Home (September prairie)

"In scenery I like flat country.  

In life I don’t like much to happen."

from Passing Remark

"Wherever we looked the land would hold us up. "

from One Home

by William Stafford

Sept. Snow

"Fast drives the snow, and no man comes this way;
The hills grow wintry white, and bleak winds moan
About the naked uplands. I alone
Am neither sad, nor shelterless, nor gray,
Wrapped round with thought, content to watch and dream."

from In November

by Archibald Lampman (One of my favourite poets)

Coot

"To hear at eve the bleating of far flocks,
The mud-hen's whistle from the marsh at morn;
To skirt with deafened ears and brain o'erborne
Some foam-filled rapid charging down its rocks
With iron roar of waters; far away
Across wide-reeded meres, pensive with noon,
 To hear the querulous outcry of the loon;
To lie among deep rocks, and watch all day
On liquid heights the snowy clouds melt by;
Or hear from wood-capped mountain-brows the jay
 Pierce the bright morning with his jibing cry.?"

from Comfort of the Fields

Archibald Lampman

Fall Reflections

"This land like a mirror turns you inward

And you become a forest in a furtive lake;

The dark pines of your mind reach downward,

You dream in the green of your time,

Your memory is a row of sinking pines."

from Dark Pines Under Water

by Gwendolyn MacEwen

Gull

"Time and space - time to be alone, space to move about - these may well become the great scarcities of tomorrow."

Edwin Way Teale

One thing our somewhat truncated autumn at the cabin showed us is the potential beauty we could experience during a longer stay.

“Time is the river. We are the islands. Time washes around us and flows away and with it flow fragments of our lives. So, little by little, each island shrinks….But where, who can say, down the long stream of time, are our eroded days deposited?” 

Journey into Summer
Edwin Way Teale

"The seasons, like greater tides, ebb and flow across the continents."

Edwin Way Teale

Since we got the snow in Sept. at the cabin, we seemed to enter directly into winter with over 30+ cm or about a foot of snow in 24 hours earlier this week in Calgary. We spoke to a gallery owner Saturday who lives in the foothills and she got over twice that. But before we left the cabin the beauty of autumn was really becoming evident. One thing that really impressed us was the thousands of snow geese that passed over head or lay like drifts in the fields. And when I think of of the seasons I think of Edwin Way Teale and his four book series The America Seasons documenting 75,000 miles travelled across America to follow the changing seasons. Although at present I do wonder whether Autumn Across America or Wandering Through Winter is the more appropriate volume.

" For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad."
Edwin Way Teale

"These were the lonely hours, when at last she could let down from the work of the day, when she could stand there and feel the wind touch her hair, when she could look at the bright, silent stars, and hear a coyote’s plaintive cry come from far out on the plain."

from Conagher: 
by Louis L'Amour

Evening Drive

"For the texture of this life is like a field of stars 

In which the past is hidden in a tracery 

Looming high above our lives, a tangle of bright moments"

from A Substitute for Time

by John Koethe

Today, Friday, Sept 7th, Sandhill Cranes

"In a world which is its own motto: 

The bright colors of the trees 

And the mild brilliance of the mind 

In autumn, and the yearlong helplessness. 

Each thing speaks for itself 

But with so much room around every word"

from Objects in Autumn

by John Koethe

" A life's partitions are internal to it,

and of no significance beyond its course."

from La Duree

by John Koethe

“Much is missed if we have eyes only for the bright colors. 

Nature should be viewed without distinction… She makes no choice 

herself; everything that happens has equal significance. 

Nothing can be dispensed with. This is a common mistake 

that many people make: They think that half of nature 

can be destroyed — the uncomfortable half 

— while still retaining the acceptable and the pleasing side.”

 – Eliot Porter