October Lake

I went back to Ruby Lake over the thanksgiving weekend with my boys, Ben and Will. The spiders and their webs that had held the forest in their strands two weeks ago were all gone. The webs had been eaten by their spiders and carried off into hiding for the winter. The weather has turned toward cool and the lake did not even try to make us think of swimming. Chester alone was anxious to send waves across the smooth skin of the lake as he pushed on for his ball. Just like last month, there were no people at the lake. The water level seemed the same but the world around the lake had changed.

As I watched Chester swim for his ball, I noticed that the waves he made with his body were so different from a boat. His wake was not smooth – the up and down straining of his head; the beating of his heart and the pulling of his front legs interrupted the smoothness of the ‘V’ shaped lines along his wake while the push of his hind legs under the water left concentric arcs that slowly expanded, retreated and diminished behind him as he swam toward his ball that drew him far into the lake.

There were no spiders to be found; the wasps that had so bravely buzzed me two weeks ago were no longer flying and richer colors had been pressed into the dry autumn leaves that smoldered abandoned on their branches. I noticed that in isolation from the world around them the water and the sky seemed unchanged. The first few pages of this autumn’s arrival have already been written, read, closed forever behind a bookmark of time and then set down on the forest floor like a memory resting on the shore of a watchful caretaker. Summer and early fall has ended and a new sleepier season has begun.

Mushrooms and toadstools were silently massed into groups or stood solitary on the forest floor. I wondered if they considered themselves lucky to have a large maple leaf land on top of them and cover them where they stood. When I noticed the mushrooms it reminded me that even after a tree dies it is still important to the forest as it circles back into life. Mushrooms appear for a short time in October and then shyly retreat back into the ground where they remain invisible to us until their time comes round again. I don’t pick mushrooms I just like looking at them. Besides, mushroom mistakes can be big ones. It has always been in my nature to expand successful experiments right to their limits – till something almost breaks…. like canoeing a river and continually seeking the faster waters until an error declares my limit and leaves me wet. It is one way that I learn but somehow I know that is no way to approach mushrooms.

I am reminded that my life is in constant change and transition just like the forest I walk in. The mushrooms made me feel a bit uncomfortable at first as if I was being given a warning that I must open to the new world around me soon and awaken to it or fall lifeless on the forest floor to rot. I am anxious to live more and learn more with the time I have here. I honor the process of death and rebirth in the forest and become clear about where I am now in my own circle of life. It seems wonderful that I just come to the lake to enjoy being here yet it always seems to be waiting with the gift of a new lesson to surprise me.

After being at the lake today I stopped by the plant nursery on my way home with Ben and Will and bought a variety of bulbs to plant in my garden. I invited their flowers to greet us in the spring as I placed them into the soil. I will remember how it felt to hold their dried and hardened kernel in my hand when I planted them in rich soil. I want to be there in the spring to welcome them and to enjoy them and to know that my hand touched them just as I will be touched by their emergence. I am ready to arrive into this new season.