Misty Autumn Morning and An Encounter With The Mysterious Phenologist

It was a cold, misty morning. I bundled up with Raffi and we set out into the deep russet red of the November woods, camera in hand, hoping to capture the last firey colors before they blow away. Autumn is so short and precious...blink twice and you might miss it.

My heart was pounding as we entered the forest. Surely, this is the absolute height of color for the year. Copper leaves spilled everywhere, fluttering and spinning through the air.

We came to the hunter's lookout that was put up in the summer.

Behind it, thick fog curling around tree tops.

The little wild daisies on the roadside were a pale contrast to all the deep vivid colors. They were wilting and wet with dew, but still holding on.

Sometimes, when I'm leaning close to take a picture of brittle weeds and brush, I wonder if anyone else who walks by thinks they are pretty like I do.

And did anyone else notice the charm of this cluster of inky mushrooms?

It was impossible to avoid the wet muck of these tire tracks, glistening with puddles full of leaves. But who can bother caring about muddy shoes when the world looks like this?

Raffi was asleep by now in his carrier, his hands folded neatly and his chest rising and falling against mine. I was filled with happiness, realizing that I was finally doing it...I was finally sharing this season with my very own child. I have longed for this for so many years!

I continued down the path, the tall trees reaching into the mist on either side. The only sound was my sneakers crunching in the leaves.

We passed the skinny trees, as I call them...they look odd and interesting in every season, but especially now, so bare, like a bunch of matchsticks someone shoved into the ground.

And somewhere along the way, I spotted him. The phenologist. Walking down the path, his hands behind his back, the faint sweet scent of pipe tobacco smoke trailing behind him.

He walked slowly, taking in the colors, noticing the wilting daisies, the roadside weeds, and the inky mushrooms, just like me.

Or...was it just an old man?

In my imagination, he is the phenologist. Noticing all the little seasonal changes. Jotting down careful notes in a little book that is falling apart with age. Drawing sketches of plants and insects. Taking photographs of the first green spears of wild garlic in March and stopping in his tracks to listen to the crow's lonely caw in December.

As we stepped out of the forest, I turned back to look at the red tree tops, and thought of the phenologist, whose heart is one with mine.

The Tale of Sarah's Forgotten Flower

Once upon a time, there was a tiny village nestled in an emerald-green valley. Of all the children in the village, Sarah, Owen, and Paul were the best of friends. They did all the things you can imagine country children doing: in the Summer they fished and swam in the river; in Autumn they told secrets in the tree fort; in Winter they built snowmen and raced down white hills on sleds; and in Spring they caught frogs and got delightfully muddy. 


Sarah could have been mistaken for one of the boys, and was often the dirtiest and bravest of the three. But there was one thing girlie about her: she loved flowers. Her mother let her keep a small corner of the garden where she tended herbs, peas, and pumpkins. But especially flowers. 


Owen and Paul teased her for liking flowers, but not too much. She was, after all, a girl.


As they grew older, and Sarah grew more beautiful, both Owen and Paul couldn't help but fall in love with her. Of course, neither of the boys said anything. Though each carried a burning hope in their heart that some day, Sarah would fall in love with them, and be their wife. 


Eventually they were all too old for netting butterflies and catching tadpoles in mason jars, and so it happened that they saw less and less of one another. Owen went to work on a ranch, while Paul went to study law in a near by town. It was pretty lonely in the little village, and nothing much happened, so Sarah decided to be adventurous and travel accross the ocean to a distant land. And there she stayed.


The three friends wrote letters to one another as the years passed. Paul grew very wealthy, while Owen worked very hard for very little. Both remained secretly in love with Sarah. And both were heartbroken when they received letters from Sarah, telling them that she had grown very ill.


She told them that she missed the emerald green valley, the little village, and her family. She missed Owen and Paul, and thought of their childhood with such fondness. And she said that there was one flower from her home country which she longed to see, which did not grow where she lived now. She couldn't remember the name of the flower anymore, it was so long ago. But she said that it was blue, and very special.


Paul immediately notified his assistants to find all the special and rare blue flowers in the country. One by one he sent them, very tediously packaged in glass, to Sarah, who lay in her bed by the window. One by one she opened them...wild orchids, irises, and flowers so rare that hardly anyone knew their name. 


'No,' she wrote to Paul each time a new flower arrived, wilting from the long journey overseas. 'This isn't the flower I mean.'


Again Paul would have his assistants pour over books, modern and ancient, to find every rare blue flower in the country. Again he would have the specimens packaged in glass, and send them off on ships  where people were payed in gold to tend to them carefully. But to no avail. Paul grew very impatient and bitter, and concluded that Sarah must have lost her mind. There existed no such rare blue flower!


Meanwhile, Owen had put together all of his meager savings and boarded a ship headed for the far-away country where Sarah lived. He had hardly more than the clothes on his back. He didn't even know how he would pay for the journey back home. But he knew he had to see Sarah again.


Finally he arrived, half starved and quite filthy from the long journey at sea. He hurried to her bedside where she lay, pale and listless, but very happy to see him.


"Owen....it's you," she whispred. "You've come all this way!"


They spoke of their memories, talked and laughed long into the night. The more she laughed, the more color shone on Sarah's cheeks. Eventually the sun began to rise, and Owen remembered something.


"Sarah, I brought you something from the little emerald valley. It's not much..." He opened her palm and poured something out a small leather pouch. Sarah leaned and strained her eyes. 


"What are they, Owen?" She asked.


"Forget-me-not seeds," he replied. "I remember how much you loved them in your little garden. I thought maybe you could try to grow them here."


Sarah wept. "Forget-me-nots! Yes, these are the ones. These are the flowers I have missed so much. You remembered."


Owen stayed with Sarah and nursed her to health. He planted forget-me-not seeds in pots and barrels and window boxes where they flourished. And one day, Sarah and Owen married.


When word of this came to Paul, he was furious. 


'Forget-me-nots?! But you said the flower was special! Forget-me-nots are as good as a weed! They are neither rare, nore are they special!'


'They are special,' Sarah wrote back. 'They are special to me.'

xoxo country girl

Beltane, Wild Herbs, Warm Fire, and Old Tales

Yesterday, the last day of April, I was fortunate enough to take part in a Beltane celebration. My friend Gerit and her partner Brigitte organized an herb walk, after which we would build a fire and cook a soup with wild herbs. I took my friend Tini along, and we both brought our dogs. It was a nice group of people, about 13 of us, and we set out into the green, listening along the way as Gerit and Brigitte taught us about various plants and herbs. 

We were told about the Celts, about their way of dividing the year into eight parts. We were told that the herbs were strongest at the full moon, and it was true...the woodruff picked on the full moon smelled the sweetest and strongest. We picked leaves, rubbed them between our fingers, smelled them, tasted them. Spicy, mild, bitter, sour. Then we headed to the outdoor kitchen, where a fire was burning and a soup pot was waiting. Our witches cauldron.

There were herbs to be washed and diced. Some people peeled potatoes, some spoke of witches and fairy tales, others wrote down spells or wishes that they wanted to send up to the gods on the smoke. I chopped onions and ate bread.

Once the pot was hot, the onions were tossed in and stirred with an ingenius handmade tool: a fork dug into the end of a long stick. 

We gathered around the fire as the sun sank; there were benches and tree stumps to sit on...I lay a blanket on the ground and the dogs curled up around me. Gerit told us old stories of witches, the Celts, Beltane, and poisonous plants used in a salve smeared on witches feet to make them fly.

As I looked around at the faces in the firelight, blue smoke rising, soup bubbling, I felt how good it was, how natural, for a group of people to sit around a fire and tell stories and share a meal. We ate the soup, delicious, with trees around us, and moon and stars above. It was beautiful.


 xoxo country girl

The Girl Who Collected Autumn, part one

Once upon a time there was a girl who lived in a small village. The people in the village were very busy, but the girl wasn't. She took walks with her dog in the woods, over hills, and through fields. Some people in the village said, "Look at her, all she does is walk all day, and paint, and sing, and write, and play with her dog. She doesn't do anything important. She doesn't make any money. Most importantly, she doesn't contribute anything to society!"

Still, she went on, taking her walks, singing her songs, thinking her thoughts, dreaming her dreams. 

It began to get colder and the leaves were changing color. The people in the village were very busy. They complained about the weather and didn't like the biting wind. But mostly, they didn't really notice.

Leaves flew down from the branches, and scattered themselves all over the village. They flew over rooftops, cluttered the sidewalks, and stuck to the wet streets when it rained. Every now and then, when a village person looked up from their desk or out of their shop window, they would see the girl in her pink coat, looking all around her with wonder and stooping to pick up leaves. "That girl! She really is wasting her time. Why doesn't she make something useful of herself?" 

The girl didn't pay them any mind. She knew in her heart she would have something to give, come winter. She quietly continued, making sure to remember the smells, the light, the taste of dew, the sound of crows squaking and of wind rustling.

She collected the prettiest fallen leaves, placed them in her pockets, and brought them home.
There, she scattered them on the table to admire before pressing them between the pages of thick, heavy books. 
The girl had a plan.

part 2 coming soon xoxo