BY LESLIE REGO
As I watch, the Hunter’s Moon hovers over the mountain. The mountain slumbers a deep sleep, mute for the moment, life still within its cold embrace. I follow the rays of the moon as they flutter over the creek. The water is wide awake. The constant rapids scatter the moonbeams. The river sounds are amplified within the night’s embrace.
Autumn is not just one season, but many seasons grouped together. There is the hint of crispness in the air that begins toward the end of August. The leaves on the trees are still green, with bits of yellow beginning to intrude. The yellow encroaches more and more until the golden season of October arrives. This year we have yet another season added to our Autumn, the season of extreme cold when the leaves, shocked into submission, fall from the trees, cloaking the land in green rather than ochers.
William Carlos Williams wrote, “A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches. Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold.”
My thoughts skip around as I watch the moon. The rays catch some of the leaves, which are carpeting the ground. They are silhouetted. I cannot tell if they are green or yellow, but I do think how quickly the circadian rhythms can get out of sync. I look at the solid mountain and the cascading river, seemingly continuing on their seasonal journey.
“The fact is,” observed Van Gogh, “the fact is that we are painters in real life, and the important thing is to breathe as hard as we can ever breathe.” As Annie Dillard wrote in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, “So I breathe…”
I followed suit. I breathed. Then I took a deeper breath. The season is a jumble, I thought, of extreme cold with a hint of warmth. The yellows are not as intense as they have been in other years, but the moon is vivid, casting a brilliance over the land rivaling the last of the autumn gold caught in the sun’s rays.
Leslie Rego is an Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist, artist and Blaine County resident. To view more of Rego’s art, visit www.leslierego.com.