It’s maybe two weeks since I’ve walked in “my” fields. I’ve been traveling, then I was catching up on sleep. Now suddenly it’s autumn.

Only in the fields. Looking out my window now, writing this at midmorning, I see green, gold, summer, summer, summer. But this morning I saw the turn in the hedges, and scented it on the luminous intensity of dawn. Hawthorn, maple, cherry, blackberry leaves–all turning, and the haws that were mostly hard and green gone scarlet.

The grass grew long, goldening slowly, until sometime between my last walk and a day or three ago. It’s close-cut now, and slightly ragged, like it’s had a little time to gasp a few last breaths.

Fog smoothed the edges this morning, coalescing close to the soil, transpiring upward not much higher than my head. It seemed to move when I did, slow like lava, but when I stopped it lay utterly still in silent, shifty folds; I couldn’t quite catch it out. Every encounter felt like that this morning: neither quite one thing nor another.

Mornings like this feel a little haunted. Thin, you might say, even more than dawn always does. They remind me the year is a living creature, breathing as I breathe. Also alienly, anciently, vastly and untranslatably–and so perhaps not the way I experience breath at all.

Happy nearly-autumn, friends. Blessings on your turning year.