Embracing October

“October is a hallelujah! reverberating in my body year-round.” ~John Nichols 

September sings her last blues riff on the prairie.

The calendar pages over to October. We rush to embrace everything the season has to offer, ready for a change. Ready for something new.

The tallgrass crackles with static electricity, throwing off seed sparks in every direction. Do you feel the tingle?

A cool front moves in. Skies cloud over; turn bumpy metal. The bright greens of summer begin to drain into autumn’s palette of russet, copper, and cream.

Leaves loosen their grip. Let go. Let go. A free-fall transition.

You can feel surrender in the air.  A beautiful loss, bittersweet. As Anatole France wrote, “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy….”

Everywhere in the tallgrass, seeds blow away, fall to the ground, or are collected by volunteers. The seeds are the future; glimpsed but uncertain.

At dawn-break, sun lights the mist rising over the tallgrass. We hold our breath.

What will autumn have in store for us?

I can’t wait to find out.

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The opening quote is from The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn by John Nichols (1940-). Nichols also wrote the well-known novel, The Milagro Beanfield War, which explores history, ethnicity, and land and water rights.

Anatole France (1844-1924), who wrote the other quote used in this essay, was a French poet and novelist who won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature.

All photos copyright Cindy Crosby: (top to bottom) Mist rising in big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; you-pick pumpkin patch, Jonamac Orchard, Malta, IL; Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) , Conrad Station Savanna, The Nature Conservancy and DNR, Morocco, IN; road through the tallgrass, Nachusa Grasslands, The Nature Conservancy, Franklin Grove, IL; three leaves, Springbrook Nature Center, Itasca, IL; unknown milkweed (Asclepias spp.), Conrad Station Savanna, The Nature Conservancy and Indiana DNR, Morocco, IL; crescent moon over author’s backyard prairie patch, Glen Ellyn, IL; mist rising with prairie plants and non-natives at Hidden Lake Forest Preserve, Forest Preserve District of DuPage County, Downer’s Grove, IL.

Prairie Endings and Beginnings

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” –T. S. Eliot

October recedes in the rear-view mirror.

Hello, November.

On the edge of the prairie, ruby-leaved maples still spill their colors into the cold, blue air.

An Asian beetle scrambles along a wooden beam, then slows.

Grasshoppers flip and turn on the bridge through the tallgrass, then pause, as if asking: “What’s next?”

It’s the end of one cycle. And the beginning of another.

The season of seeds.

The prairie explodes with a seed extravaganza.

Asters shake their pom poms.

Milkweeds breathe out tendrils of silk.

Cattails wave their batons to the rhythm the wind commands.

Seeds, seeds, seeds.

The prairie tosses its curls full of Canada wild rye, punctuated with thistle.

‘

Enchanter’s nightshade casts its spell over the prairie savanna.

One by one, the seeds ripen, then loosen.

And so, they begin their journeys. Some by wind…

Some by water…

Some lifted by the hands of volunteers, who spend hours in the tallgrass picking prairie seeds into buckets;

spread them out in trays to dry.

The seeds wait, ready to be sown on winter’s first snow. The cold, damp conditions will ready them for germination in the spring.

The end of one chapter; the beginning of another.

The promise of something new to come.

All photos by Cindy Crosby: (top to bottom) Leaves, Springbrook Nature Center, Itasca, IL; bridge, SNC; maple (Acer spp.), SNC; Asian beetle, SNC; grasshopper, SNC; wild plum (Prunus americana), Songbird Slough Forest Preserve of DuPage County, Itasca, IL; asters (unknown species) , SS;  milkweed pod (Asclepias syriaca), SS; cattails (Typha latifolia), SS; Canada wild rye (Elymus canadensis), Nachusa Grasslands, Franklin Grove, IL; enchanter’s nightshade (Circaea lutetiana canadensis), NG; beebalm with milkweed seed (Monarda fistulosa and Asclepias syriaca), author’s backyard in Glen Ellyn, IL; Springbrook Creek by the prairie at SNC; seeds collected on the Schulenberg Prairie, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL;  native prairie seeds drying in the headhouse, SP;  little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), SP; goldenrod (Solidago spp), SS.

The opening quote is from T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets.”