The mourning doves gave it away as they gathered along the field’s edges. Their plump, light-bulb bodies were perched side by side on wires and tree limbs as they patiently watched me mow the pasture for one last time.
Wings flapping, they landed to gobble down weed seeds shaken onto the cleared ground behind me. Intellectually, I knew summer was soon to wane into autumn, but it wasn’t until this moment that I recognized the gradual shift had begun.
Each of the seasons carries its own personality and leaves us with stories to share about what we have done or wish we had taken the time to do. There were spring gobblers welcoming early mornings, morels popping up in unlikely places, colorful warblers flitting among the branches and steelhead muscling their way up streams. Summer hosted bass dancing on a lake’s surface, the nightly baritone bellow of bullfrogs, a kit fox learning to mouse as it bounced between freshly raked windrows and perched redtails watching for a vole to twitch its nose in the high grass. Winter brought fresh otter tracks along the snowy river bank, ice fishing, ice skating, fresh-cut Christmas trees, hot chocolate and a bourbon by a warming fire — and misty memories of family.
But it’s autumn that I wait for, a season painted with a kaleidoscope’s array of colors. It will all too soon fade and be transformed into a crunchy carpet, turning squirrels into elephants. A coyote’s mournful cry drifts into the moonlight while skeins of waterfowl turn Labrador, Chessie and Golden eyes skyward. A buck deer magically materializes in a clearing in a way that its presence feels undeserved.
For me, autumn is an emotion. I came to that understanding while walking to the car on a gray October day during a cold drizzle. My springer’s coat and tail carried burdock reminders of a long morning’s woodcock hunt that failed to move a single bird. As wet and tired as we both were, the burrs in Shadow’s coat would still need to be removed and the old double dried and oiled before calling it a day. That’s when it struck me, there was no place in the world I would rather have been at that moment.
Each autumn, I find myself recreating that experience, though the years themselves are slowly transforming it. Those times yet to come have turned into times that are past. Good dogs like Gretch, Chipper, Shadow, Gunner, Ranger and Gus are memories, and too many of the coverts we searched have yielded to concrete and houses. Even Briar, my little English cocker, has somehow turned thirteen. Her steps have become cautious and her dashes through the brush are not so quick.
We both know we’re slowing down a bit, but both of our hearts still beat with youthful anticipation. I hope she doesn’t mind that her much younger protégé — or dare I say successor — Bramble tags along now and then. Another little cocker, Bramble has the bounce and excitement of a puppy, of youth, sometimes testing Briar’s patience during her serious bird-search. I know that Bramble is learning to love autumn as much as her big sister and me. I can see it in her burning almond eyes as the new scents and sounds surround her and she stares at me, as if from soul to soul — for direction, approval, forgiveness and for love. For some undeserved reason, I know that she somehow sees me as her god, not understanding that she is the gift that God gave me.
Autumn is simply the eclipse of spring, endowing you with its own rainbow promise of a new year yet to arrive. It’s helped to teach me that time is our greatest inheritance, one that should be spent wisely. You see, one day you realize that such things are in a much shorter supply than you ever realized. I wish someone had explained that to me a long time ago, and that I’d been smart enough to listen.
“You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.”
— Charles Buxto
