Transitioning...

The seasons are in flux these days. As am I. The season’s change mirrors my mood. At no other time does physical change, its relentless assault on what we are, our natural surroundings, and our sense of place, stand so apparent in the Rockies. For two decades, I’ve learned to anticipate this time of year.

This autumn I’ve been eagerly watching as the color wheel explodes around me-especially in demonstrations of stark yellows, oranges, reds, and purples. This fall leaves my senses just as astounded as ever. These sudden colors do not easily blend with the standard array of green and blue that makes up our typical mountain landscape. They are shocking, bold, and sling shot anyone who is paying attention far past passivity towards an active interaction with nature.

The bull pines shed their needles and as they fall to earth, the resulting ground cover becomes a sea of rust. The aspen and birch explode in yellow and orange in a burst of expression that in the any light is beyond blinding. The mountain maple, the cottonwoods, and the wild rose rise tone perfect as perfectly pitched back up singers, their understory foilage, hue and placement complimenting the song of larger vegetation. The larch go all canon ball and turn entire hill sides into brilliant coverings of lime green, then yellow, then orange, and finally, the slopes fade into brown. These trees are the dominate players in this far north landscape and as they loose their needles, the earth embraces the deep cover of their tailings.

Yet a sense of loss accompanies so much color. The hummingbirds are gone. So are many of the song birds. Dawn is not nearly as noisy as it was a month ago. It’s been several weeks since I have seen an osprey or witnessed a dog fight between the eagles, the ravens and the osprey. The frogs are silent, as are the crickets. The bald eagles reclaim their dominion over all the sky.

Some nights, the only sounders are a long coyote, the geese squawking on the shores of Downs Island, the breeze, and the far off whine of a semi truck. I can hear the big rigs for miles before they transition from coming to going, and I can trace their fading progress for miles further on their journey. I imagine tired chip truck drivers and coffee-ed-up stick haulers committed in their tasking of lumbering toward the mills of the Calispel Valley. I can hear their static filled radios keeping time with their movement all the while their clearance lights compete with the stars and the crescent moon for who shall light the night.

If the song of nature is a symphony, then this measure, this first stanza in the silent chorus of winter, is one of needed introspection. It is as if nature is giving us a chance to collect ourselves before winter tramples our sense of serenity into that familiar, fitful struggle of brutal survival. Our annual warfare against winter defines a mental, physical and emotional battle, one that those of us who live in the north-country must wage each year. Still it is enough that these natural, visual fireworks dancing around us should suffice and mentor our senses. Indeed the addition of summer’s extracurricular noise, no matter how natural, would be too much. And so it is, only the coyotes, the geese and the truckers remain to break the world’s concentration.

This summer climate change seemed ever more evident. June and July were unusually humid and unforgiving. Our typical cool mountain nights were noticeably absent and the mosquitoes, which always hesitated to linger here, set up a prolonged camp. My family and my adopted extended families both suffered loss, and the noticeable absence of those who seemed so permanent in the landscape of our never ending stories, remains ever present on our minds.

This morning my father called for his weekly check up- check in. These calls I cherish because I know they will not last forever. Today’s call, made as he hauled freight around the Puget Sound, announced the sudden death of my second cousin, Donnie Goffinet. Donnie lived along this same river and he was a lifer of the mountains-either in Southeast Alaska or here in the Selkirks. My father seemed amazed that this relation could so suddenly pass from our lives. In my father’s life, Donnie was a strong fixture, a marvelous log home builder and a master of the woods and wood workmanship. My father reminded me that each instance of awareness is a gift and I can not help but agree. While Donnie’s homes live on, that he built them with a dedicated craftsman’s care and that his painstaking precision shall stand strong against too much change, is a silent gifting for those lucky enough to reside amidst his handiwork.

As I hung up the phone with my father, I looked out over the river. I can’t help but refresh my outlook. I have been so lucky to have lived in this place for most of my adult life and lucky to know some of the amazing families that live in this valley. To stand here and be present in the moment also encompasses vistas that even pictures can’t quite capture. Just watch the miles of stunning terrain and one will find that even the slightest movement of time is cause for wonder. The fog kissing the foothills, partnered with the mist rising off the river refocuses into the deepest blue sky then changes again into blinding white outs. Blow down becomes new growth.

This place seems to whisper a cadence that is one of natural conflict. Time is our companion. Time is our enemy. Time is forever. And yet it is all so fleeting.

All we know throughout our lives is that time, like us, is always in transition.

It always has been.

It always will be.