6:24 a.m. 57 degrees, wind NNE 8 mph; wind combs through leaves like a river; trees sway, moan, knock together. Sky: clouds consolidated, bruised, and brooding; a depressed ceiling keeps pace with the leaves. Permanent streams: upper, like leaves on a still morning, a silent creep that borders on stagnating; lower, leaf carpet grows, yellow and brown, waits to be washed into the marsh, which may be a long time coming. Wetlands: reeds and goldenrods in motion, swaying like an Iowa prairie (sans coneflowers); across the marsh, an orchestra of sounds, evergreens whistle, the original woodwinds, and lean southwest; flat light encourages barred owl, its voice chides the restless morning. I dawdle and listen. Pond: wind cleans the surface, pushes leaves into the shallow south cove. Valley fresh and refreshed. A wand of blackberry leaves purple, thorns like a cat's claws, arches over nothing but green; berries are long gone, eaten by the dogs and me.
Red squirrels take the morning off but not red-breasted nuthatches, numbers down, voices up, tin horns amid the woodwinds.
Here and there, the raucous call of a crow and a jay; otherwise, the wind dominates the soundscape.
On the nineteenth anniversary of a world spun apart by social centrifuge, all I can say is what I remember. Jordan drew pictures of leopards in kindergarten, fingers stained yellow; Casey, in eighth grade, performed on the Hanover High School ropes course. I stood by the kitchen sink transfixed to public radio, stunned beyond understanding. Linny, who had died the year before, would have cried listening to the morning news. Yet, on September 11, 2001, a billion birds headed south across a sad continent and kept going . . . like they always do. Beyond pandemics, cruelties, and Pyrrhic victories, beyond our vestigial relationship with Earth’s biota lies a reassuring constant, seasons come and go despite us—the slow, gorgeous, unsupervised procession of autumn.