CELEBRATE THE SEASON:
The Time of Falling Leaves
by Mary Lou Healy
 Autumn: The Exultant March to Death
by Zephine Humphrey
Emilo's Creations are Gourd-eous
by Kirt Zimmer
A Harvest of Fall Recipes
POETRY:
A Vermont Walk in October
by Daniel L. Cady
When the Frost is on the Punkin
by James Witcomb Riley
GARDENING:
Legends of the Chrysanthemum
by Leonard Perry
EVERYTHING WOOD HEAT:
Drop Me a Liner
by Daryle Thomas
INTO THE OUTDOORS:
Long Trail Therapy
An Excursion into the Woods Rekindles the Spirit.
VERMONT WEATHERVANE BOOK NEWS:
Passing Strange
True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors
Richard Brown's New England
A new book by acclaimed photographer Richard Brown.
GET OUT AND ABOUT:
Views Through Time:
A Driving Tour of Rutland County, Vt.
Vermont Country Calendar
EXPLORE OUR OTHER SEASONS:
FALL
WINTER
SPRING
SUMMER
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It's worth the trip!
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weathervane
@ruralvermont.com
We welcome your comments, suggestions, and questions.
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RD 1, Box 680
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Autumn: The Exultant
March to Death
by Zephine Humphrey
It is strange that one can support the glory of the autumn better than that of the spring. It may be because of the sense of repose deep underneath it all, the past which steadies the present. There is significant grandeur, too, in the exultant march to death, which sobers and lifts the spirit...
The slow conflagration spreads gradually through the September days, kindling little by little. But the first of October feels a quickened impulse. "Come now, let us finish!" cries the Year, and snatches her torch and runs down the valley, touching hill after hill.
How the peaks blaze up then against the sky! And all the broad flanks are overrun with a sudden crimson glory. The trees on the edges of the lower woods, especially slender, lonely trees, are transformed into what is even more the quality than the hue of flame. They flicker and vibrate before the eye, seeming always in tremulous motion, their substance dissolved in color.
Day after day presses hard along, with its tribute of glory to glory; even the hours work magical change, weaving the swift, many-colored web; the climax is near at hand.
Then, when at last the whole world is aflame, come the best days of all. Days? It may be only one day. But it is the best day in the year.
The glory pauses, caught at its height, arrested by a silence profound, which knows no limitation. The very rushing of color along the tops of the mountains has seemed to give forth a clamorous note during the previous week. But now what a wide, wide hush!
Is it the smoke of burning hills that spreads such a blue blaze over the valley? The mountains themselves glow obscurely through it, looming like great opal fragments of an imagined world. There is no slightest breath of wind, but from the maple beside the door fall wide-circling golden leaves, slowly, silently. With the faintest whisper they touch the ground, the merest little sigh. The dim air is full of their waving pinions, their music is the only sound, their "unheard melodies."
After this there come storm and destruction, the raving of the wild west wind, the flying of sear leaves all abroad beneath the lowering sky. Great ragged masses of cloud scud by across purple-black mountains. The stripped tree beside the door becomes once more a lyre, and moans and shrieks through its denuded boughs. The grandeur at the heart of the Year is fully manifest, and those who watch are awed and lifted by her mood into a terror which is not fear, a somber exultation. What greatness of destiny is this which calls such greatness of being forth!
It would seem that the end must surely come now, the heralded winter, without delay. But no. The Year, being sure of her course, can afford delays and whimsical turns. It is only a progress not quite sure which feels that it must rush at once to conclusion, hit the goal now or never. In the midst of her sternness of desolation, the Year turns aside from her lowering mountains, sits down in the valley, and calls her dreams back, flocking in multitudes. Indian summer holds the land in its brief spell of magic. All around the valley the soft gray hills loom against the soft blue sky. There are no birds left to flutter or sing. There are no flowers, no falling leaves: there is even no color to stir the sense, nothing but silence and peace--peace.
The final coming of the great end, the destiny of the seasons which has summoned them on through their woven changes, is oftentimes wrought in the night, in silence, with the Year's own secrecy. The earth goes to sleep bare and comfortless...
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