EVERYTHING ON THIS MOUNTAIN is unpredictable, which is one of the things that makes a stay here fascinating. I’ve gone on and on about the weather–you simply do not know one minute to the next what is going to happen. Last month, for instance, we were enjoying a sunny day when an angry bolt of lightning came from nowhere and striking in the meadow, sent a ground current up through the house’s foundation and into the long-handled roller Tim held as he painted the lower porch. The energy arced as it traveled, and he saw it jump wall to roller but thankfully did not feel anything but for immense surprise and awe.

And great relief, praise hands.

Nevertheless the bizarre occurrence certainly got our attention.

And here we are now, another strange something afoot.

It is late August, which means the season of azalea, rhododendron, and wild mountain blueberries has come and gone. Our time here has been sporadic, and yet it is worthy of mention that we have not seen a single black bear since early June. Or was it May? Friends on the mountain tell us their bear sightings, too, have been infrequent, centering on one shy, lone fella who moves about with no consistent pattern. He has appeared on our wildlife cameras over these months but only two or three times.

It is an odd, dramatic change.

It is a change that feels unsettling.

ALL OF THIS is to say we move about differently up here without the stay-on-high-alert THERE MIGHT BE A BEAR status of prior Augusts. For instance, just yesterday friends joined us for an overnight and we took a leisurely hike down the old OM Trail, winding through the deep woods of Narnia, then back up through the tall grasses of our steep meadow.

I found plenty to photograph, as always. But the hardly-have-to-worry stroll served as a powerful reminder of how short the season is here, how when you are down in it and amongst it you become aware of just how quickly nature takes over. It has a mind of its own, that meadow, and as we’ve let it go with very little trimming this summer it has been very happy to remind us just WHO’S BOSS.

It insisted to me, as well, that summer, here, has passed.

That it has gone so quickly!

That seasons change so fast.

THERE ARE MOMENTS, like right now, when I feel this and can hardly catch my breath.

There are times (like this morning) when I have awakened long before the sun, and I have lain there, quiet in the dark, certain I can feel it, certain I can hear it: Time moving on.

Time a speeding train

racing through space,

passing in the very air

above me.

XXOO

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