Donovan Kelly

Our cabin lies just below the lip of the ridge, on the morning side of the world. Which in late standard-time autumn makes for early sunrises and sudden blasts of morning light, but also to a quickening of day-ending darkness. Long before evening is called for on the internal clock, darkness creeps in and the cabin begins to chill. Early to chill, quick to warm, reminds me of a girl I used to date. Ah, the fundamental male challenge of starting a fire that will warm both cabin and woman. Now, in the autumn of my years, it still is good to be able to warm up one or the other.

Autumn is also a time to share and not share. The birds flock back to the feeders and friends re-discover our cabin and the beauty of mountains and fall foliage. We are, of course, glad to see them. And sometimes the birds and I are glad to see them and the pretty leaves go, and let peace sink in again. (The previous statement does not necessarily reflect the views of cabin management, but just that of one sometimes crotchety member of the staff.)

The mice also become eager to share our cabin, and I, according to pre-nuptial vows, must be just as quick to evict them. Previous owners used poison, and their dead mice and squirrels accumulated in the crawl spaces and produced little malodorous pockets until time and heat mummified the remains. We have burned many a candle for the stinky departed. Now I run a trap line that becomes particularly busy as the chill lengthens and mouse migration turns serious. Internment is in a distant hollow rock that has become a shrine for the neighborhood possum.

The disappearing leaves slowly allow the night sky back into the cabin. The sky twinkles again though newly bared branches and I can drift west with the moon through a thin soup of clouds that swirls hurriedly east towards the flatlands. Drift west, old man, drift west.

The blanket of dry leaves amplifies sound, so that the passage of a chipmunk sounds like a squirrel, a squirrel a deer, and a deer an elephant. Night adds to the amplification so that many a brave man who has gone to the woodpile in darkness is suddenly surrounded by the sounds of a marauding herd of bear. This quickens the nighttime pace of autumnal man and provides beneficial aerobic effects.

Over breakfast on the deck, I watched three deer nuzzling acorns through the leaves, as peaceful and unhurried as cows chewing grass. The sun peeked nervously over a distant ridge and the naked tree shadows grew longer than the trees and painted tiger strips on the brown leaves. I thought I should bestir myself, to cutteth and splitteth wood, for lo the cold of winter surely cometh. But methinks to let the grazing deer finish their acorns in peace while my cold hands hugged a second cup of coffee. It’s half past late autumn, a good time to pause.