Recognizing August

 

Recognizing August

I’m not sure that any other season disguises itself as well as August.  Wait, you say, August is a month, it’s not a season.  The calendar would say that perhaps you’re correct.  My walk this morning would say that you may have missed the point. 

The first sign of August is the heaviness of the air.  You even have to play your experience hunch about there even being air.  I stop mid-stride.  My eyes search all the leaves that comprise the lush green tapestry to my right – aspen, birch, maple, basswood, oak and ash.  There isn’t even the slightest quiver.  I glance to the tall grasses and wildflowers in the ditch across the road.  Chicory, Black-eyed Susans, yellow coneflowers are as still as a painting of wildflowers.  Further back into the open field the compass plant, standing a full eight feet high, stands at full and stiff attention. 

I notice in the wildflowers that despite the respite of blue chicory and white Queen Anne’s lace, that yellow has crept across the landscape as the dominant flower hue of August.  But that also brings some variety from the pale butter like petals of the primrose, to the brightness of the Susans.  The far hillside is covered with a swath of golden rod, paused no doubt from blooming on this motionless morning.

To the south, where that slope exhausts itself into a grassy low point, there is some ground fog looking like the artist whimsically left a bit of unpainted canvas mid-picture and in plain view.    

The sun has somehow managed to rise.  I know it has because as I turn and look back towards the east it is hanging there exactly where it should be, mid-air, about thirty degrees from the horizon.  The sky appears to have absorbed the light so that the sun looks more like a glowing hole burned through the sky than a celestial body.  The sky is bluish but not blue. 

I notice that the cattails have set their brown seed heads.  They look fuzzy and soft to the touch from afar, but they are really firm and stiff at this point. 

Suddenly, the croaky trumpets of sandhill cranes shatters the stillness.  I turn to see two cranes, their wingbeats and calling in unison, clear the trees to the north and pass by.  Their motion is almost overwhelming to the stillness and quiet of the day.  They pass over a tree line to the west and other out-of-sight cranes burst out in trumpets of welcome.  I can tell from the excitement that the pair accepted their invitation to land even though I can no longer see them.

I wonder about that pair of cranes for a moment.  Was their mating this spring not fruitful?  Or, perhaps the chick didn’t survive a late spring cold night, or it perhaps fell victim to any of the many natural predators.  I’d like to imagine that the chick is now already full-grown and fending for itself.  But I also know the reality that many other cranes sightings these past weeks have been in threes and fours – suggesting the parents and the year’s young.  Only this pair of cranes knows for certain.

I turn for home at this point, recognizing that the season of August is full upon us. 

His Peace <><

Deacon Dan