Despite the invasions of beautiful cars and noisy motorcycles (they are after all toys and we are all happy with our toys), there’s a quiet that accompanies these early fall days. The greening stops, pauses briefly, then enters into the riot of color. Hummingbirds take their last drops of nectar, turn south, and leave behind a vacuum. Monarchs begin the miracle of their migration. Before long, geese announce their southward flight.
One fall afternoon I stood in a neighbor’s driveway talking about something when we both became silent. A large V of south flying geese dropped toward a pasture. We stood in evening shadows, the geese came down to catch the last of the sun, long trails of white underbellies lower and lower toward the night’s rest, wings fluttering to catch the down draft, until quietly they sank into the furrows prepared for the next season. In silence we watched and listened, until Rick said, “God’s necklace.”
And so I have seen them ever since, an organic necklace that has its own organization. The lead goose cuts the air to save energy for those behind who ride in his slip, and the lead rotates.
Leadership is for a short time, then changes to preserve the group. We see the same thing in team bike or ski races when one competitor takes the lead to let the others recharge, then sinks back to let another take the lead. Each leads for a certain time and the strength of the whole is preserved.
We are not too far from the agrarian world. Two or three generations ago most of us would be sharpening tools, cleaning storage sheds and granaries and silos, double checking tractor tires, gathering Mason jars and lids, cleaning the sauerkraut crocks, getting ready for the massive activities to harvest, store, preserve, assess the crops and next year’s needs.
Even today there is such a pause: airing fall and winter clothes, readying batteries and radiators, checking filters, stacking fireplace wood. Neither summer nor winter, we still feel the pause that is universal and, I think, makes us uncomfortable as we don’t know what to do with the quiet.
The human world is very noisy right now: shouts, threats, name calling, bombs, tariffs, cries of starving children, killings in schools and churches and sidewalks, a president who displays no skill beyond, “You’re Fired!” and a list of slurs that cannot be called sentences.
If we were wise enough, we would learn by observation if not by example. Among the original American cultures we find a workable pattern called potlatch. They knew a leader would accumulate wealth. Periodically the leader displays his wealth and gives it away to his constituents. This too a link in God’s necklace.
I cherish the quiet on my back porch, a quiet broken only when a small critter, deep in her canine DNA, knows she must bark at the white cat who, deep in her feline DNA, knows she must saunter across the clearing smiling her sardonic smile. A game of mutual delight.