STILL NOTICING: AUTUMN
Today I am overwhelmed and anxious. Full moon fallout. The moon is getting more demanding as it gets colder. We just had the full hunter’s moon which has been so bright several people I know are having trouble sleeping. I love the moon, but I also resent it a bit for biological reasons.Â
The trees are starting to peak. The fireworks begin. Last week I drove home late at night and wet aspen leaves were rolling across the road like waves of gold coins breaking loose from the grasses.
Fog hugs onto hilly low spots in the mornings after a rain. It’s like fancy pubic hair on huge ghosts.
Some monarch chrysalises have not popped open yet. I’m worried. I reassure myself that some creature will at least make a meal of them if the butterflies don't finish cooking in there.
There are massive hatches of cluster flies and those invasive fake ladybugs going on behind sunny window panes. One day the feed room is clean and quiet, the next there is fat buzzing and flying bugs teeming around all the window seals like a tiny horror movie. I can fill a vacuum in a three-day period with those fake ladybugs. Their smell is really bad while not being stinky? It’s a faux fight-or-flight trigger, I suppose. Well played, invasive fake ladybugs. I hope something eats them?
The horses are more visibly sparkly. They love autumn; it has cooled to their preferred ice age temperatures and the biting flies are dying in droves. They sing little greetings at me when I come into the barn. There is nothing in the world so touching as a horse being genuinely glad to see you. They like it when I come out in the later afternoon to just stand in the sun and scratch them. They scratch me back, and Boon, a bay Clydesdale cross, balances his head on top of mine. (It’s really heavy, but I indulge him.) I touch his throat which has a brand new sheen of silky, velvet winter hair coming in. It’s what I imagined petting Mr. Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street must have felt like when I was a kid. Horses have the same impossible eyelashes that he does.Â
As I write this I have the same sensation of the stress draining out of me when I pet the horses and they pet me back. I want everyone to have something that makes them feel this way.Â
What makes you feel that way?
I was so afraid of horses when I was a child, but I hated carrots, so I would steal the bag of carrots from our refrigerator and walk up the street and feed them all to the horse that lived in the field at the mansion (a mansion in an otherwise lower middle class neighborhood). It is sweet to imagine the happy sounds the horses make when you walk into their house. My comparable stress-melter is when my cats both sit on my lap at the same time and purr. They don't even like each other that much, but they love me, so they compromise.
When I’m in my backyard and the squirrels know that means I’ll be feeding them. They appear at my feet (literally) gazing up with their dark round eyes. They wait until I go inside and get the peanuts and fill each dish around the beds, then they and their buddies (more and more invitees each day lately) dash about gathering some and sitting over the pond eating others keeping a watchful eye on me. My neighbor traps them, I welcome them, even when they dig up my stuff. We’re all just trying to survive.