Dreaming the World

A clear, cool day. Last night we ALMOST had rain but the storm veered to our west. The world is parched and plants are responding by turning brown or shifting quickly into autumn colour. During the five years we have lived here seasonal drought has become the norm. There is no relief in sight.

Mornings are suddenly quiet. Last night a lone osprey patrolled the bay without a peep. Over at the harbour side nest, three osprey chatted away as they settled in to roost for the night. Most of the osprey, along with the arctic terns, have left.

Mid-August feels increasingly like September. More evenings have a chill even as days are warm. Stretches of high humidity pass more quickly, replaced by cool comfort. Many evenings and mornings remain foggy but during the day the air is fine.

Last night we went to one of our favourite restaurants, a place of mainly outdoor seating overlooking a vast bay with The Islands raising above the water in the distance. A solitary osprey and a sprinkling of swallows passed by as we ate. We could see storms in the distance as a cool breeze swooned in from the ocean. Then the light changed; suddenly we were in autumn light: clear, sharp, and golden. Driving home, the world was bathed in beauty.

For many years Jennie’s mom owned a house on the bay just north of Bar Harbor. Before the pandemic we could be found there during late August most years and there are many posts from there spread along this blog’s history. We grew to expect an abrupt shift from summer to fall during our stay. Days would be hot and evenings pleasant. Then we would have a day or two of fog and rain which would give way to crystalline, star-filled nights, and sweatshirts and sweaters. Autumn!

I’ve been revisiting the books of Hal Borland who took particular delight in the changing light that marks the shift from summer to autumn. Over the years of writing books and New York Times columns, he returned repeatedly to the shifting tones and nuances of light that accompany the changing seasons. In 1978, very near the end of his life, he noted the accumulating alterations to seasons; I doubt he could have foreseen the enormity of the shifts to swiftly come. Certainly, even as I was teaching climate change, I could not fathom the disruptions we would live to witness.

All of that is true, yet, underneath the changes lies the continuity that is the ever changing seasons here in the mid-latitudes of the Norther Hemisphere; a dependability Borland drew, and held, close to his heart. We can be certain that the seasons will continue to change, even as those seasons become increasingly unfamiliar.