It's somehow September and the tomato plants droop with the weight of ripe deliciousness while the canner rattles away on the stovetop. The pantry is stocked with juice, diced tomatoes, marinara, salsa, and the fruit just keeps coming.
Somehow, the horseweeds are eight feet tall, sticktights are clinging to our pant legs, and millions of birds with their fledged young are winging south. Rogue red leaves dot the landscape, the potatoes are tucked in the root cellar. Didn't we just plant the garden last week?
A few decades ago my wife and I had the privilege of working with Pete Edisen, a Norwegian fisherman who made a livelihood gill netting herring and lake trout in the cold waters of Lake Superior. His methods were timeless— a wooden skiff, a net, a couple of weathered buoys, and a working knowledge of where to find fish. We helped him tend nets and clean and package the catch on cool September mornings and made memories that are among our best.
In those days time moved at a crawl, but I remember Pete saying we’d spend the first 25 years of life pulling our sled uphill and it'd be downhill thereafter. He didn’t mention the influence of gravity, that each year would pass more quickly than the one before, and how in a half century we‘d be speeding wildly towards an uncertain end catching glimpses of our lives in a rearview mirror.
The goldenrod, jewelweed, snakeroot, and wingstem are in full bloom. Monarchs are fueling up on zinnias. Crickets are singing non-stop. September is the great in-between, when summer wanes and autumn organizes. At daybreak the pond wears a heavy mist. There’s an anticipation in the air, a transition afoot, the way water shimmers before the boil, the way silence grips the theater as the opening curtain is drawn.
This morning, for just a moment, the sled slowed and we seized a rare look around. It was mild, calm, cloudless, perfect. Orange pumpkins lay scattered among dying vines, sweet peppers glowed with warm ripeness, goldfinches fussed over remnant seeds of thistle. Every odd area that had escaped the mower held asters or chicory or some concoction of weeds and grasses, and nothing about it looked unkempt or short on beauty.
In this particular September we approach a political transition as a divided populace prepares to vote red or blue. In the quest for commander-in-chief, one candidate runs a campaign of fear and revenge, the other, hope. One is well known for spreading falsehoods while the other favors truth. One has been twice impeached and convicted by a jury for multiple felonies, the other has no criminal record and a history of defending human rights and freedoms. One is a man who openly idolizes dictators and the other a woman who is ready to stand up to the best of them. Somehow, a close race is anticipated.
And so goes the month in-between. In a few weeks the woodlands will be blazing with color and the pumpkins covered with frost and we’ll be back on our sleds screaming through time, come what may. If we’re lucky we’ll have good health and our candidate will be sworn in and we’ll grab snippets of life until another September suddenly comes. For those of us who can see the bottom of the run, it’s enough.
