There is a season ...

GARDEN AT DUSK

One morning in late August, we wake to find summer tumbling down.  The sun rises later and when I pull myself from bed at 5:30 to take the dogs out, the air is chill and shadowy, the dawn a faint peach glow against the eastern horizon. The grass is damp with night dew and the world is silent.  The birds that chirruped and trilled throughout the warmer days have raised and sent their families out on their own, so there is no cacophony over staking territory. The deer that have spent the night grazing our fields disappear, ghostlike into the woods. On the distant hills, a few precocious maples show hints of orange and red, vague promises of the color to come. The change makes us restless.

The west wind has an edge that scatters the thin fog hovering in the overgrown meadow across the road and quickens our steps as we walk the dogs.  They too feel the change, their heads higher, searching the breeze and the road ahead, and they fling themselves into the shaggy bushes along the roadside, tails wagging ferociously, noses quivering in search of the small creatures that scurry through the underbrush. 

 

 Flocks of starlings and grackles rise alarmed from the spruces and school together against the brightening sky, and the chickadees and other small warblers flit through the fading leaves of the alders and chokecherries.  

The change quickens our labors; there is much to do before temperatures plummet and snow sheaths the green of trees and meadows.  The garden that we fretted over all summer has grown into a ripe lushness that demands our attention. There are peas and beans to pick and beets to pull and garlic to braid.  The tomatoes are so thick and laden with barely ripening fruit that to venture into the patch is like wading into a jungle.  The corn – Golden Bantam and Ashworth – is nearly as tall as an elephant’s eye and on each stalk, three to four ears are plumping, scarved in tawny silk. 

Pumpkins and winter squashes are starting to turn deep orange, and the New England Long pie pumpkins that we pick green and store in the kitchen are plump zeppelins promising great pies and muffins and soups when January’s blast demands something sweet and soothing to eat.  The kitchen has become a processing facility, and husband Bruce freezes a half dozen quarts of vegetables a day, while I turn out jars and jars of jams and jellies and pickles and relishes early every Saturday morning. 

The fields are mown, and the bales stacked neatly alongside the berry beds and the garden, and in the golden glory of late August, the world seems content to simply bask in what may well be the last warm rays of sun.  But there is still much to do. 

Wood must be ordered, then stacked and covered.  The snow blower has to be tuned, the shovel edges sharpened and a home found for this year’s new lawn chairs.  Quilts and comforters need to be unpacked, spilling from the totes smelling of lavender and then hung for airing before they are put on the beds, and snow tires pulled down from the garage rafters.   

We need to order meat: lamb and chicken and turkeys, maybe a shoulder of beef from friends, and freezers must be cleaned out to be ready for them when they come from the butcher.  There are herbs to be gathered and hung to dry and others to be divided and planted in new spots. The weather service warns of frost and we patiently wait for the wind to die, and then rush from the house in the thick dusk to drape the plants with tarps and old bed sheets, protection against the inevitable cold that blows in from Canada.

We are busy with taking stock and planning ahead.  Meals become more substantial; hearty soups laden with the garden’s provender, and the house is fragrant with the aroma of drying herbs hung on the pot rack. The table is laden with jars of pickles and relishes, jams and jellies that must be stacked carefully in the pantry cabinet, and in this interlude between summer and winter, the world quiets and slows.  At night, when we take the dogs out, the sky is black and distant; the Milky Way is a pale ribbon of other worlds and stars winking a hello to our tiny planet.  We pull our jackets closer, inhale the cold, clean air and retreat to the light and warmth, bracing for the inevitability of winter. 

 Night Fall

RESCUE

From the start, the day was fretful.  In the soft glow of dawn, it promised all the glory of a late summer day, but thunderstorms gathered in the northwest, rolling down the St. John Valley toward us.  I left the house in a hurry, anxious to get to school before the distant rumbles and black clouds caught me.  At the end of the road, I look left and right, then left again into the gleam of rising sun, and pulled out onto High Meadow Road, heading south to Presque Isle.

At the top of the small knoll, not a hundred yards from our dirt road, a very small deer was in the middle of the road, wandering around in circles. I braked, slowed down, hoping there was no one coming up the hill behind me, and then slowed to a stop. 

The fawn circled anxiously around, stretching its neck out, searching, searching. Even through the closed windows I could hear it crying a desperate blat.  My heart sank.

“Where is your mother?” I asked aloud, not expecting an answer.  The tiny creature, smaller than my Hannah, delicate and fragile enough to be easily blown over by a strong wind, continued its troubled pacing and circling. 

A car breached the top of the hill heading down towards us and I flashed my lights frantically.

“I should just go get it,” I thought as I watched the tiny creature intently as it wandered off the road down into a copse of old firs.  I rolled down the window. The sad, desperate cries were louder, tugging at me.   The oncoming car slowed, pulled up next to me.  Our town administrator was driving and as she stopped beside me, she rolled down the window.

"It’s a fawn,” I said, almost breathless with my fear for the tiny creature. “I don’t know where its mother is.”

She too had seen it and was near as worried as I. We pondered what to do.

I called my husband and ordered him to call Fish and Game and have a warden come get the tiny deer.  He was befuddled, confused, but said he would. I eased the car off the road and got out.  The tiny animal had disappeared into the tall overgrown timothy, but I could follow it by its cries.  In my heart I knew this was the tiny spotted fawn I had photographed with its mama less than a week ago.

I called Bruce back. “I can’t get anyone,” he said.

I called Kasey, a dozen miles away, enlisting her help. The town administrator drove off to town hall, a scant two miles away, intent on calling.  I called Bruce back again.

“They’re dispatching someone,” he said.  The fawn still cried.  I had been there a half hour.  “You need to go to school,” my husband told me.   I wanted to wait for help to come. I wanted to wade into the damp field and scoop up the helpless baby, hold it in my arms, keep it safe.  I fought back tears. Thunder rumbled in the distance, the dark clouds edged across the sun.

I called town hall, and the town administrator said she too had a promise that someone was coming to collect the baby.  Rain drops splattered on the windshield, dappled the pavement. The deer blatted, over and over.   Another fifteen minutes passed.  I needed to get to school.

Reluctantly, I got in the car, started it and eased toward Presque Isle.  On the drive I resolved to stop at the fire ranger’s house along the way and urge him to help rescue the fawn. There was no one home. In Washburn, I asked the clerk at the small store where I buy morning coffee if there was a warden in town, and told her the story. She sent me across the street to the police department, the name of one officer in my head.  If anyone could help, she told me, it would be him.

He was not there. He was out on a skunk call, but after I told my story, the dispatcher tried to reach him. A few minutes later, he rolled into the parking lot where I met him and told my tale.  I followed him into the office that soon smelled faintly skunky, and he began calling wardens.  He finally located and spoke with the one dispatched. He was on his way to try to rescue the fawn.   I fought the urge to jump in my car and drive back to show him where it was.

Instead, I thanked the officer, apologized for being a weepy, crazy lady. He just smiled, and then I crossed the street to my car and headed on south to school. 

For an hour I wrestled with software problems, photocopied handouts, and then headed to class. The fawn kept batting against my concentration.

At 11 o’clock, I rushed to my office and called town hall. The administrator had heard nothing and was both concerned and irritated. She had left her number, asked to be called and had heard from no one.  More than two hours had passed since we first had called Fish and Game, more than enough time to find and rescue the spotted fawn.   Again, tears welled up in my eyes.

I picked up the phone again and called the dispatcher. I would go all the way to the state capital if necessary to get the fawn rescued.  I gave the dispatcher my name and began to explain my call.

“They got her,” he interrupted.  I wasn’t sure I heard right.

“They got her?” I asked. “What did they do with her?”

“She still needs milk so they took her to the wildlife biologist.”

“They took her to the wildlife biologist?” I asked, jubilant.

“Yup,” he said.

"Thank you, thank you,” I whooped. Then I hung up quickly before he could hear me cry. Again.

I do not know what happened to her mother.  Maybe she was hit by a speeding car and struggled off the road and died.  Maybe the coyotes ran her down as she led them away from her tiny baby. 

I do know that the fawn, barely two months old the police officer estimated, will get the milk she needs, be warm as the nights cool, safe from predators and cars, and now has the chance to grow up and leap across the wild north fields.

This golden day

A golden day. I ran the ridge north to Allagash, up hills and down. A high blue dome of sky above and a crisp tinge in the air. The distant hills are sheathed in deep emerald of spruces and firs and the fields below a patchwork of green potatoes and winter wheat, the dun of mowed timothy and gold of barley and oats. Here and there was a swath of the burnt red of ripening buckwheat. Farm ponds and small lakes glittered in the bright sun, and makeshift farm stands anchored the edges of the road, card tables and plywooded sawhorses piled with cucumbers and summer squash, carmine tomatoes, and potatoes – red, blue, and white. In the tiny towns, husbands climbed ladders, painting the trim, nailing down loose shingles while wives bent over lush gardens, gathering the provender for this winter’s meals. Along the Saint John, a few late season fishermen cast shimmering lines into the flowing water, and at the sporting camps, woodpiles had blossomed beside each cabin.

The world stands still here, beyond the reach of those things that pull us to busyness.  The traffic thins, the pulse slows, and shoulders relax. The road swoops and dips through pressing forest and opens to riverside marsh. Shrubs are jeweled with crimson berries and in the gravel beside the pavement there are tracks from the morning’s early moose. Overhead, a single eagle pirouettes and arabesques against a thin cloud, then wings onward. On a bluff above a broad sweep of river, a canoe painted white brims scarlet with geraniums planted in it.

There are blessings in such simplicity.  

(Photo by The Nature Conservancy)