The Friday Ramble - Listening

It is cool on this fine morning at the end of July, and the casement windows are open. A slight breeze stirs the draperies, and as I tap away here on the keyboard with a large mug of Java nearby, I can hear day beginning in the village, the community awakening and coming to life around the little blue house and its old trees.

The music of a classic northern midsummer sunrise is geese in flight, and I am listening to them thoughtfully this morning as I write this. To and fro go the great birds, away into the farm fields at dawn to feed, converse and gossip together, then down to the river at nightfall to rest on the water and gather their energies for the next day.

Listening, I find myself thinking (to quote Linda Hogan) of a deeper way, and I recall the rippling cadences played by the water at a favorite bend in the Clyde River near Hopetown. Under the trees there, the singing river is deeply incised and meandering, the water painted green and gold and russet on summer afternoons by the ripening fields and birch stands on the far shore. Often, there are herons striding the shallows there, and always, there are geese drifting along in the sunlight at the end of the day.

It is high summer now, but shorter days and longer nights are already on their way, and the opening day of August is the first of three autumnal harvest festivals, the others being the Autumn Equinox (Harvest Home or Mabon) on September 21, and Samhain (Halloween) on the last day of October. The geese winging their exuberant way overhead this morning and floating serenely down the Clyde River at twilight are harbingers of autumn brilliance and gathering abundance, of apples and gourds, stands of ripe corn and fields of blowing pink and bronze barley. How lovely it all is...

This, I say to myself, is the true and proper music of Lughnasadh and First Harvest, the sound of the seasons and the turning year - this is Gaia's perfect orchestration, her wild untrammeled choreography. This is the music of what happens. Listen, can you hear it?

Happy, Lughnasadh (or Lammas) to everyone.