Fall presents a love / hate relationship. Lingering warmth that we didn’t see earlier is now here. Short days and temperatures in the high 20’s give us the feeling that we can still accomplish much outside, like gardening, painting, shingling, riding out into the pastures or driving somewhere. The harvest continues and presents a haze that hangs heavy in the air just like the setting sun. The shadows of the day are perfect for photos and of course there’s the blinding light driving into the West. The northern lights and star gazing in the fall may take you to lonely grid roads, but remember the wildlife that travel means you are never truly alone!
The fall bounty is coming in and kids are anxiously awaiting Halloween! Corn mazes, scare houses, pumpkin purchases and yes, pumpkin flavoured drinks seem to be infiltrating the coffee shops. (I’ll pass thanks). Wait let’s just go back to the bounty coming in! Gardeners and farmers know what this means, bringing in the crop, the cattle returning home, cleaning the garden up and the preservation of food through winter months. Did you do canning, pickling or preserves through the last couple of months? I sure didn’t!! Yet thinking of all these annual chores does make one long for the simpler things in life that were actually very had work. Imagine preparation of a pumpkin pie one hundred years ago. Growing the pumpkin, cooking it, finding the right spices to add to the pumpkin pulp, all while doing it by hand. You likely didn’t just open a can of pumpkin. Cleaning the seeds from the pumpkin, cooking the pumpkin, mashing and straining the pumpkin to create a creamy filling for the home made crust. But the end result would have been such a treat. Now we just head to the grocery store.
Pass along some of the finest moments of your life to the next generation. I should have paid more attention to the “how to” of cooking a turkey, making gravy, baking buns, that sort of thing. And I know you can go on line, but for someone to actually be right there, now that’s where the magic happens. Its not just the process, it is how you got there. The stories, the intimate interaction of learning not from a book but from another generation. Don’t let busy times or other excuses stand in the way. As I ponder my own journey, I wonder from time to time, what have I really missed. We can get so entrenched in work and other day to day motions that we miss what really matters.
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