" I'll Take a Dozen...."
...and still they'll go by too quickly
October...Is there a grander period of time than the 31 days that comprise the tenth month of the year? Clear brisk mornings followed by warm afternoons and still, bracing nights with star-swept skies....Days ranging between the warmth of early June and the chill precursors of a long winter. Last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday it brought us one of its trademarks, a stretch of glorious Indian Summer. And then a rapid snap back to reality, which had a beauty of its own, at least between the raindrops and hail stones.
No doubt we'll see plenty of clear, brisk sunny days this month, those days on which the Long Trail beckons us.
More than any other month, October offers weather that invigorates us, calls us outdoors, and rewards us with nature's bounty, literally and figuratively, whether we're harvesting or hiking. Between going to college, graduate school, work and pleasure travel, and several jobs, I have enjoyed October as a resident or on an extended stay in New York, New Jersey, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Norway, Ohio, and South Carolina in addition to Vermont. It's wonderful everywhere.
But October is not just the weather. It's the memories that October elicits. I don't know if it's the pure eventfulness of October that creates the disproportionate share of memories, or some ingrained introspection that the season creates as summer turns toward winter. Whichever it is, for me at least October carries more sentiment than any of the other months.
October is sneaking the transistor radio into class for the World Series. Mazeroski's home run for the ' 60 Pirates. Carlton Fisk willing his ball fair on a chill 1975 October evening. And yes, the heartbreak of Bucky Dent's pop fly or Mookie Wilson's roller...against hated Noo Yawk, no less. It's the high school football games we played or watched and the memories of the friends from that precious part of our lives. It's a glorious sunset on a crisp evening, waiting to pick up the kids from Willow Park after Harry Dickey Boomer soccer and catching up on events with other parents waiting for their kids.
And if you are of a certain age when it was still OK to do, it's remembering the smell of burning leaves or the taste of the potatoes roasted all day in the leaf pile you burned as you raked them. (The memories of the blisters happily got sublimated.) It's enjoying cider and donuts, and any activities or companions associated with them...Halloween and fondly remembering the parents who took us out to capture the spoils...and the little kids we took out trick or treating in cute outfits, now taller than we are.
For me, it's the good fortune of October 28th, 1978, when I finally got the attention of that pretty blonde girl I'm married to.
You skiers and beach-lovers beware. If its ever up to me, I'll take twelve Octobers.
Bennington, VT
October 2001
Kev: Some seasonal agreement from the Welsh poet...
POEM IN OCTOBER
by Dylan Thomas
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.
And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.